Bob was co-founder (along with Susan Virnig) and Executive Director of Northwest Regional Facilitators (NRF) from 1974 until 2000. It was one of the early multi-purpose community development corporations in the Northwest. His work at NRF changed people’s lives, but by the 90s, Bob realized that while NRF was doing great work, it wasn’t addressing root causes of social and economic disparities and consequently was not leading to more healthy and resilient communities.

Bob needed a different emphasis, one based on the idea that we needed to go beyond just helping individuals to creating new stories for new futures.  NewStories was founded as a charitable nonprofit organization with a focus on “designing and facilitating spaces and programs that move from conversation to action.”  As part of that focus, and in partnerships with other organizations, he began to “come into relationship with the people I needed to learn from.” Many of these were in their 20’s and 30’s. “It was eye-opening,” he said. “They were pioneers of change.”  

Since its founding, NewStories has collaborated with many people and places around the world committed to building thriving, resilient communities in chaotic times. In the early years, Bob worked with people in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Senegal, Greece, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico and Australia, as well as people in North America.  But Japan’s triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear explosions  in 2011 “created an irresistible call for me to stand with people in communities in the disaster region to help them create the future they wanted.” Japan became a major focus of his work for six years, and what he called “an extraordinary learning ground.”

Closer to home, in 2018 The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), in partnership with the Alaska Institute for Justice, reached out to NewStories for help bringing together communities who faced climate forced displacement. That October, First Peoples from 26 tribes and nations in Alaska, the South Pacific, Bangladesh, Louisiana and the Olympic Peninsula came together. Their goal was to “powerfully share the ways in which rapid climate change is impacting their communities and traditional ways of life, share traditional knowledge and practices, and begin to develop a collective vision for the future.” Bob and Susan Virnig were both part of the NewStories Team facilitating the convening. The first thing that happened was making time for each of the 26 tribal leaders to spend about 30 minutes telling their own story. At the time, Bob thought it would be too much and take too long, but “I was wrong,” he said. At the end, one of the Alaskan elders said, “We have heard 26 stories, and they are all one story. We are family.”    

Today, NewStories is a 6-person core team working in the U.S. and abroad, with “an intergenerational collective of diverse master practitioners from all over the world.” Their purpose is to “help leaders, communities, organizations and systems flourish in these chaotic times of collapse and transformation.”  

To find out more about how Bob and his NewStories are making a difference, check out newstories.org., sign up for their eNewsletter and look for a whole new web site coming this spring.