Meet the founder of Working Stories
Peter Orton, PhD, founder of Working Stories, was initiator and driving force of IBM Learning’s storytelling practice. His work helping IBM technologists, leaders, managers, researchers, and staff people in crafting and embedding story into their communications and presentations has been highlighted in Fast Company, Forbes, and Knowledge Management magazine, among others.
IBM’s Storytelling
IBM’s Storytelling internal website, which Peter designed, presently helps 378,000 global IBM employees learn how to create, improve and build narrative into their work.
International Recognition
An internationally recognized instructional designer and patent holder of innovative learning tools, Peter’s work has been recognized with “Best Practice” honors from the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) and the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), and ranked #1 in Training magazine’s “Top 100” list. Peter was individually highlighted in Chief Learning Officer magazine as one of “Five Exceptional Learning Professionals” within the corporate learning industry.
Additional Experience
Prior to joining IBM in 1996, Peter was a Senior Producer at Harvard Business School Publishing where he designed story-based leadership- and management-development learning programs for HBSP New Media. Before HBSP, he spent a dozen years as a Hollywood scriptwriter, including serving as Story Editor for Steven Spielberg’s NBC-TV prime-time series, “Amazing Stories.”
Education
Peter earned a PhD in Communication from Stanford University, where he wrote his dissertation on Story Strength Elements, an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a B.A. cum laude in Sociology from Princeton University.