When Bearing Witness®: Becoming a Trauma-Informed Storyteller

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The questions we ask shape a story long before a single word is written. A simple, open-ended invitation gives someone room to show up as a whole person, rather than only as someone who received services from your organization. In this episode, Maria sits down with Maria Rio, founder and CEO of the fundraising consulting firm Further Together, to talk about how fundraisers can gather and tell stories with dignity at the center.

Maria Rio shares how coming to Canada as a refugee and accessing services as a child shaped the way she once told stories, and how that shifted as she saw how those narratives landed with others. Together, the pair explore her 10 Dignified Storytelling Questions, gentle interviewing techniques like mirroring, what to do when a story owner shares more than expected, and why storytellers need boundaries and their own support. They also discuss why empowering donors builds longer relationships than guilt ever could.

This conversation is an invitation to see trauma-informed storytelling as a lens rather than a checklist, and to remember that the stories we tell, however small they feel, add up to how entire communities are understood.

About Maria Rio

Maria leads the Further Together team. Maria came to Canada as a refugee at an early age. After being assisted by many charities and going through an arduous 12-year immigration process to become a Canadian citizen, Maria devoted herself to working in non-profit. Maria has over a decade of fundraising and non-profit experience. Her op-eds have been featured in national publications such as the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and CCF. She is frequently asked to speak at webinars and conferences and was a finalist for the national 2022 Charity Village Best Individual Fundraiser Award. Maria also hosts The Small Nonprofit podcast and sits on the Board of Living Wage Canada.

Connect with Maria Rio

Website | LinkedIn |The Small Nonprofit Podcast |  10 Dignified Storytelling Questions 

About Host Maria Bryan

Maria Bryan is a trauma-informed storytelling trainer. She helps nonprofit leaders tell powerful and impactful stories that resist harm. Maria has over fifteen years in marketing communications in the public sector. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, and is professionally certified in Trauma & Resilience, Trauma-Informed Space Holding, Trauma-Informed Coaching, and Somatic Embodiment & Regulation. Maria is a firm believer that storytellers make the world a healthier, safer, cleaner, and happier place. 

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In this episode, Maria shares the question that changed the trajectory of her work and ultimately led to the creation of the When Bearing Witness® Trauma-Informed Storytelling Certification Program.

After years of working in nonprofit marketing and communications, Maria was leading a virtual storytelling webinar when someone asked her a question she didn’t have the answer to.

Maria explores what she began to notice once she looked back at her own storytelling work through this new lens, from the limits of good intentions and signed consent forms to the emotional impact of bearing witness to difficult stories.

She also shares some of the biggest lessons she has learned after guiding more than 160 people through the When Bearing Witness training program, including why consent must be ongoing, why harm repair matters, why storytellers need care too, and why knowing the principles of trauma-informed storytelling is very different from applying them in real organizational situations.

You’ll also hear how those lessons are shaping the next chapter of the training program and its expanded focus on practice, reflection, and community.

About Host Maria Bryan

Maria Bryan is a trauma-informed storytelling trainer. She helps nonprofit leaders tell powerful and impactful stories that resist harm. Maria has over fifteen years in marketing communications in the public sector. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, and is professionally certified in Trauma & Resilience, Trauma-Informed Space Holding, Trauma-Informed Coaching, and Somatic Embodiment & Regulation. Maria is a firm believer that storytellers make the world a healthier, safer, cleaner, and happier place. 

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Fundraising events are often where nonprofit storytelling faces its highest stakes. The room is full, the energy is high, and there is real pressure to move people toward giving. In this episode, Maria sits down with Jenna Watanabe, Creative Director at The Fundraising Event Company, to talk about what it takes to build events that are moving without becoming extractive.

Jenna shares the personal experience that shaped her approach to this work, and the two dig into what happens when consent gets lost in the momentum of a live event, why emotion does not have to mean sadness, and how joy and hope can carry as much weight as hardship. They also talk through practical protections for story owners, from video review to backup plans, and what it means to build a program that centers dignity at every stage.

This conversation is a reminder that the most powerful moment on a fundraising stage is not the one that extracts the most emotion. It is the one that honors the person whose story made the room possible.

About Jenna Watanabe 

Jenna Watanabe is the Creative Director at The Fundraising Event Co., where she helps nonprofits create meaningful, inclusive, and successful fundraising events. With a background in fundraising, marketing, project management, writing, and storytelling, she develops event scripts, speeches, video treatments, and marketing materials that bring each organization’s mission and impact to life.

Connect with Jenna Watanabe 

The Fundraising Event Company | Instagram 

About Host Maria Bryan

Maria Bryan is a trauma-informed storytelling trainer. She helps nonprofit leaders tell powerful and impactful stories that resist harm. Maria has over fifteen years in marketing communications in the public sector. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, and is professionally certified in Trauma & Resilience, Trauma-Informed Space Holding, Trauma-Informed Coaching, and Somatic Embodiment & Regulation. Maria is a firm believer that storytellers make the world a healthier, safer, cleaner, and happier place. 

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Storytelling in the anti-trafficking space carries a particular weight, where the urgency to communicate impact can pull against the responsibility to protect the very people whose stories are being told. Many nonprofit communicators working in this space are asking how to tell stories that move people to action without exploiting pain or compromising survivor safety.

In this conversation, Preston Goff, Vice President of Global Communications at The Exodus Road, helps us explore what that balance looks like in practice. We discuss the organization's red lines around consent, why some of their most powerful stories involve months or years of waiting, and how holding firm boundaries with media partners can actually build deeper trust rather than cost opportunities. Preston shares real examples from this work, including a survivor's story that took shape only after she chose, unprompted, to share it herself.

This episode is a grounded and honest look at what it means to communicate urgency without sensationalism, and what nonprofit storytellers can learn from an organization that has chosen protection over exposure, again and again.

About Preston Goff

As the Vice President of Global Communications at The Exodus Road, Preston Goff is an expert storyteller in the anti-trafficking space. During his five-year tenure at the organization, The Exodus Road's media efforts have expanded substantially, most recently with the launch of Influenced — a cutting-edge digital safety curriculum for youth and their caregivers. Preston Goff resides in Colorado Springs with his wife and two young children.

Connect with Exodus Road and Preston Goff

Exodus Road Website | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | YouTube

Preston Goff Website | Instagram | Linkedin 

About Host Maria Bryan

Maria Bryan is a trauma-informed storytelling trainer. She helps nonprofit leaders tell powerful and impactful stories that resist harm. Maria has over fifteen years in marketing communications in the public sector. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, and is professionally certified in Trauma & Resilience, Trauma-Informed Space Holding, Trauma-Informed Coaching, and Somatic Embodiment & Regulation. Maria is a firm believer that storytellers make the world a healthier, safer, cleaner, and happier place. 

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In This Episode

Nonprofit storytelling is changing. Organizations are being asked to think more carefully about how stories are gathered, who holds power in the storytelling process, and what it means to share stories with dignity, transparency, and ongoing consent. As more nonprofits move away from transactional testimonials and toward community-centered storytelling, many teams are still navigating how to do this work ethically while continuing to communicate impact.

In this conversation, Natalie Monroe from MemoryFox helps us explore what this shift looks like in practice. We discuss the growing importance of story banks, strengths-based messaging, and giving story owners more agency over how and where their stories are shared. Natalie shares insights from her work supporting nonprofit teams through real-world storytelling challenges, including navigating sensitive stories and creating systems that help organizations gather stories with greater care.

This episode is an honest and hopeful conversation about the future of ethical and trauma-informed storytelling in the nonprofit sector.

About Natalie Monroe

Natalie Monroe is the Community Engagement Manager at MemoryFox. After a career in the wine industry learning the nuances of Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc, she landed in a nonprofit with the military-to-agriculture movement. Natalie told the stories of veterans turned farmers feeding our country. Here she embraced content creation and the power of video messaging.

Natalie is grateful to engage in mission-driven work every day.  A friend of Natalie once dubbed her the “people broker” because she thrives on introducing friends to each other and engaging in meaningful conversation. When she’s not immersed in storytelling, you might find her volunteering with the local library friends in her community of Davis, California or pondering her next themed gathering.

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LinkedIn | Learn More About MemoryFox

About Host Maria Bryan

Maria Bryan is a trauma-informed storytelling trainer. She helps nonprofit leaders tell powerful and impactful stories that resist harm. Maria has over fifteen years in marketing communications in the public sector. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, and is professionally certified in Trauma & Resilience, Trauma-Informed Space Holding, Trauma-Informed Coaching, and Somatic Embodiment & Regulation. Maria is a firm believer that storytellers make the world a healthier, safer, cleaner, and happier place. 

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By this point in the year, storytelling can start to feel different.

You’re still showing up to the interviews, the deadlines, the back and forth. But something begins to shift. A story lingers longer than you expect. A decision stays with you after it’s made. You start to notice the weight of the work in a way that’s harder to ignore.

In this episode, I’ll explore with you what it means to arrive at that moment, not as something to fix, but as something to pay attention to.

Together, we name the parts of storytelling that often go unspoken. The emotional load that builds over time. The tension between urgency and care. The quiet ways decision fatigue can shape how stories are gathered and shared.

If your work has been feeling heavier lately, this conversation is an invitation to pause, reflect, and consider what a more supported, sustainable storytelling practice might look like from here.

About Host Maria Bryan

Maria Bryan is a trauma-informed storytelling trainer. She helps nonprofit leaders tell powerful and impactful stories that resist harm. Maria has over fifteen years in marketing communications in the public sector. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, and is professionally certified in Trauma & Resilience, Trauma-Informed Space Holding, Trauma-Informed Coaching, and Somatic Embodiment & Regulation. Maria is a firm believer that storytellers make the world a healthier, safer, cleaner, and happier place. 

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Diana, CEO of Habrá Marketing and creator of the Equastory framework, joins us for a conversation about what it takes for trauma-informed storytelling to become more than an individual practice. It becomes a movement when people begin challenging harmful norms, building new practices together, and treating consent, privacy, and agency as shared responsibilities.

We explore how the stories we share can shape not only audience understanding, but a story owner’s sense of safety long after something is published.  We reflect on what it means to tell stories with people, not about them, and why lasting change requires community, accountability, and ongoing practice.

About Diana Farias Heinrich

Diana Farias Heinrich (she/her) is the CEO of Habrá Marketing and a champion of ethical nonprofit storytelling. Through her Equastory™ framework and The Ethical Nonprofit Summit, she actively safeguards equality, respect, and dignity in nonprofit communications while helping organizations raise funds with integrity. She's a certified Advocate for Survivors of Domestic Violence and for DEI in the Workplace. Diana's proud to be a mom and wife and has supported women in Ghana in starting a sustainable clean water business.

Get Your Ethical Nonprofit Tix!

Register for the Ethical Nonprofit Summit at ethicalnonprofitsummit.com, and use the code MARIABRYAN15 to save $15 on your ticket.

About Host Maria Bryan

Maria Bryan is a trauma-informed storytelling trainer. She helps nonprofit leaders tell powerful and impactful stories that resist harm. Maria has over fifteen years in marketing communications in the public sector. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, and is professionally certified in Trauma & Resilience, Trauma-Informed Space Holding, Trauma-Informed Coaching, and Somatic Embodiment & Regulation. Maria is a firm believer that storytellers make the world a healthier, safer, cleaner, and happier place. 

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What if storytelling returned back toward its oldest purpose: connection?

In this episode, I’m joined by Michael Kass, founder of Story & Spirit, to imagine what it would look like to flip the way we tell nonprofit stories, not as content, not as a tool, not as a mechanism, but as something living. Something that restores connection, belonging, and shared humanity.

And to do that, we must first explore the historical roots of nonprofit storytelling and how many of our inherited fundraising practices were shaped by systems of inequality. Together, we unpack how traditional deficit-based narratives can unintentionally strip agency from communities and reinforce an “us and them” dynamic.

We discuss anchoring asset framing as a practical shift, the difference between cultivating saviorism and cultivating connection, and the rise of artificial intelligence in storytelling and the opportunity it presents to return to something more relational and embodied. 

If you have ever felt tension between urgency and integrity in your work, this conversation invites you to widen the frame and imagine storytelling that restores wholeness rather than extracting from it.

About Michael Kass

Michael Kass is the Founder of Story & Spirit where he specializes in facilitation and convening design that fosters transformation through bridging human connection and spiritual practice. Over the past 15 years, he has facilitated convenings and trainings for clients ranging from grassroots nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies, weaving together strategic frameworks with practices that honor the whole human and complex systems. Michael serves on the Advisory Council of the International Dignified Storytelling Project, facilitates breathwork and meditation on InsightTimer, and probably likes chocolate more than you do.

Connect with Michael Kass

Mini Nonprofit Storytelling Mini-Course | Nonprofit Storytelling:

Fundraising & Beyond Course | Ethical Storytelling Resources 

About Host Maria Bryan

Maria Bryan is a trauma-informed storytelling trainer. She helps nonprofit leaders tell powerful and impactful stories that resist harm. Maria has over fifteen years in marketing communications in the public sector. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, and is professionally certified in Trauma & Resilience, Trauma-Informed Space Holding, Trauma-Informed Coaching, and Somatic Embodiment & Regulation. Maria is a firm believer that storytellers make the world a healthier, safer, cleaner, and happier place. 

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Content warning: This episode includes discussion of trauma, systemic harm, and experiences of marginalization, shared with care and intention.

This conversation begins with a truth many of us feel but don’t always name, that while trauma-informed storytelling often centers pain and loss, there is another force that has sustained communities for generations: joy.

In today’s episode of When Bearing Witness, we sit down with the Founder of 4 Da Hood, Frank Velásquez Jr., to explore joy not as an escape from hard work, but as a form of resistance and a pathway back to our full humanity. Frank reflects on what it has meant to reclaim joy personally – as a leader, storyteller, and entrepreneur – and how collective joy shows up in spaces where people of color gather together. 

This conversation examines how joy lives alongside grief, how laughter can coexist with difficult conversations, and how choosing to lead with aspiration rather than deficit can fundamentally shift the way stories are told and received. From nonprofit storytelling to leadership culture, this episode invites us to imagine what becomes possible when joy is not an afterthought, but a deliberate, liberatory practice.

About Frank Velásquez Jr.

Storyteller Extraordinaire, Social Justice Warrior and Architect of Relations, Frank Velásquez Jr., relentlessly pursues racial and gender equity, while creatively connecting our stories, preserving the unique flavor of each one like in a yummy bowl of gumbo. As Founder of 4 Da Hood and the mastermind behind the Ascending Leaders in Color leadership program, he’s forging paths for peeps of color to lead with more authenticity, courage, and joy! Because for Frank, advancing equity isn’t just a job – it’s a movement towards building generational wealth for communities of color to thrive! And he's doing it one connection, one story, one courageous conversation at a time.

Connect with Frank Velásquez Jr.

4DaHood Website | LinkedIn

About Host Maria Bryan

Maria Bryan is a trauma-informed storytelling trainer. She helps nonprofit leaders tell powerful and impactful stories that resist harm. Maria has over fifteen years in marketing communications in the public sector. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, and is professionally certified in Trauma & Resilience, Trauma-Informed Space Holding, Trauma-Informed Coaching, and Somatic Embodiment & Regulation. Maria is a firm believer that storytellers make the world a healthier, safer, cleaner, and happier place. 

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As we step into a new year of storytelling, this episode invites you to slow down, take a breath, and ground your practice in deeper care. Trauma-informed storytelling is not just about avoiding harm. It’s about building systems, rhythms, and habits that protect the people at the center of your work — including you.

In this conversation, Maria shares five practical ways to strengthen your trauma-informed storytelling practice in 2026. These approaches don’t require new software or a bigger team. It’s a gentle, practical invitation for anyone who wants to begin this year with intention.

About Host Maria Bryan

Maria Bryan is a trauma-informed storytelling trainer. She helps nonprofit leaders tell powerful and impactful stories that resist harm. Maria has over fifteen years in marketing communications in the public sector. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, and is professionally certified in Trauma & Resilience, Trauma-Informed Space Holding, Trauma-Informed Coaching, and Somatic Embodiment & Regulation. Maria is a firm believer that storytellers make the world a healthier, safer, cleaner, and happier place. 

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