Hello, I’m STEFANI
A THOUGHT LEADERSHIP ghostwriter & STRATEGIST
Ideas Matter
Ideas matter… but if you don’t package them right, no one hears them.
I package them right. I’m a brand and communications strategist who’s trained at Harvard Business School and under the former brand manager of Disney and National Geographic. I know how to make brands go viral.
But I also have a PhD from the faculty of theology & religion at the University of Oxford. I’ve published several academic papers. I’ve conducted formal research as a professional philosopher. I know how to honor complexity, sophistication, and nuance.
Let’s get your ideas out there the right way: true to their depth and nuance, as impactful as possible, and riveting to your audience at the same time.
SERVICES
BOOK & CONTENT
Ghostwriting
Have a great idea, but not the time or skills to turn it into a book? I specialise in developing and articulating big ideas in book form. I ghostwrite for top influencers affiliated with top literary agencies (I just can’t tell you who they are!).
Editing & Feedback
Have content but want to optimize its accessibility, engagement, reach, or potential to go viral? I provide feedback or edit articles, pitches, posts, and full length books for public audiences.
BRAND & IDEA SUPPORT
Idea Development
I can help you flush out your idea, make it more intellectually rigorous, support it with cutting edge research, figure out its relevance to various audiences, and all around make it more defensible, more conducive to the flourishing of readers, and more likely to stand the test of time.
Brand Element Design
I assist in the crafting of bios, blurbs, posts, pitches, one-liners, podcast content, podcast descriptions, and pretty much any words (or designs) you are going to use to showcase your brilliant ideas to public audiences.
CONSULTING & COACHING
Engagement & Thought Leadership Consulting
Looking to create a public face, grow your reach, or make impact in public audiences? I consult on all elements of strategy, from how to write a Twitter bio to how to launch a successful podcast. Reach out for specific advice or help charting a path to being an established public intellectual and/or thought leader.
Engagement & Thought Leadership Coaching
Serious about engagement, impact, and thought leadership? Hire me as a coach and partner for the long-haul, as I can help you make the most strategic decisions possible at every step on your way to public intellectual or thought leadership status.
How it works
The first step is you get in touch and tell me what you need. I don’t post prices on the internet because every project is unique. Every project takes different amounts of time, energy, and mental space. I typically do not charge by the hour because when you become my client I think about you when I run, when I eat, when I drive, when I sleep.
I price my work according to value. You should know before reaching out that I typically am paid at the top of the range for my various services. I do however work on a sliding scale. Please do not hesitate to reach out wherever on that scale you may be. If I cannot take you on a client I may nevertheless be able to direct you to resources.
For big projects (books or book proposals) I currently have a waitlist with fresh openings most likely in early spring 2024. I still would love to talk to you about your needs because I can shuffle various commitments and on and off ramp depending on the nature of your project.
I am currently available for consultation or smaller scale content creation projects.
Testimonials
ABOUT ME
I first fell in love with ideas when I read Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics when I was 11 years old. I began dreaming of being a philosopher some day. Remarkably, I achieved that dream. With the help of a great many amazing people, I made it from camping out in that dark and dusty corner of the Fraser Public Library to receiving a PhD from the top ranked university in the world.
I love ideas so much, but I was never comfortable keeping them to myself. They are so beautiful and important. It is not a stretch to say they saved my life. They helped me learn how to feel at home in a world I originally experienced as harsh and alienating. They keep showing me new paths to greater levels of peace, generosity, resilience, and joy.
They must be shared.
I became sad and frustrated during my PhD when I realized that scholars are rarely encouraged to make their ideas accessible and engaging to broader audiences. They are typically under too much pressure to publish, to compete, to get tenure, and etc. The whole structure of academia discourages reaching out beyond its walls. It’s called an Ivory Tower for a reason. It’s built to cordon itself off, to be removed from everyday life.
Throughout my doctoral work I felt so torn. Should I give 100% of my energy to coming up with my own ideas, to intervening in the discourse? Or should I work to make ideas public facing? I ended up splitting my efforts about 50/50. When I finished my PhD, I continued to split them. I did research and published papers and went to conferences. At the same time, I hosted podcasts. I took courses on communications, digital marketing, and brand strategy. I posted my ideas across social media channels and did philosophy “influencing.”
Today, I continue to research philosophical ideas, but I’ve given that a backseat. I think I can have a greater impact on the world if I help elevate a plurality of voices rather than just my own, which needs more time to develop anyway. Someday I may return to sharing my personal philosophical content among public audiences. Today is not that day.
Today I most come alive when I help bring other people’s ideas and thought leadership to fruition. Ghostwriting and strategizing are enormously fun for me because I not only get to learn from you, but I also get to empathize with you, explore your brain, and work with you to frame and articulate your ideas in fresh ways. When you hire me we go on an adventure in relational, emotional, and intellectual space together. I find it to be just the most enlivening thing.
It would be an honor to meet and hear you, help your ideas leap off the page, and strategize to get your ideas the reach they deserve.
METHODS
with every client I prioritize 3 key goals
truth
Truth matters. Your content needs to be true to you. It also needs to be literally true, or as true as we can possibly discern. I work extremely diligently to honor both of these elements of truth. This involves checking my own voice, listening to you as actively and earnestly as possible, and conducting research to assure or enhance the veracity of what we’re putting forward. I do my best to honor and develop your thoughts. I take their truth value with the utmost seriousness.
IMPACT
I optimize impact in terms of both breadth and depth. Whichever we reach for depends on your goals and the nature of your content. The secret to a responsible and lasting impact is not manipulation but rather an optimal as possible match between what you have to say and the people your content has the potential to help. I work extremely hard to optimize impact – you must understand however that this doesn’t mean “fame.” “Viral” could be among a target audience of 5 million or of 50. Impact looks different for every single thought leader – which is a good thing.
captivation
Every target audience lives with sets of words, images, values, and concepts in their heads. Optimal communicating means finding the right bridges to walk between what’s in your head and what’s in their heads. Most deep thinkers have spent so much time in their own heads that it’s difficult to see how their ideas will or can land with others. I speicalize in finding those bridges. Just like with making impact, the secret to captivating audiences isn’t manipulation; it’s being accurate about the urgency, power, and beauty of what you have to offer.
and mobilize 3 key tools
empathy
Empathy is the glue that holds my entire craft together, from start to finish. You are a person. My primary job is to empathize with you, hear you, reflect you back to you, and refract you to the world. Your audience members are people, too. Content creation and branding always run the risk of over-persuading or manipulating, though I guard as fiercely against this as possible. Empathy also requires awareness of my own emotional landscape. It is impossible to do this work without my own self bleeding into it, but I constantly monitor what I bring to the work and tirelessly check myself to assure it supports you and your audience’s flourishing.
data
The best way to figure out what an audience wants or needs is to do some research about them, or, better yet, to go out there and ask them. I specialize in conducting in-depth market research, audience surveys, user interviews, trend analysis, and A/B testing to find the right concepts and language to optimize impact.
iteration
The secret to good writing is good editing. Nothing is good on a first pass. Some things I’ve written haven’t been good until the thirtieth pass. I long ago learned a powerful lesson I tell every client: the longer you take to work on something, the better it will be. I recommend to all clients that we take as much time as possible. I can deliver in a hurry, but all of us are better served by reflection and iteration. I know what high quality branding and content is. I do not stop until I get us there.
MY CRED
Book Writing (that I can tell you about)
Author, Sexy by Nature: The Whole Foods Solution to Radiant Health, Life-Long Sex Appeal, and Soaring Confidence, Victory Belt, 2014.
Co-author, Coconuts and Kettlebells: A Personalized 4-Week Health and Fitness Plan for Life-Long Health, Happiness, and Freedom with Noelle Tarr, Harper Collins, 2018.
Branding & Marketing Strategy
Research Associate, Harvard Business School (2021-2022).
Student, Strategic Branding, Harvard University (2021).
Director, Health to Empower organization for women’s health and empowerment, > 1 million annual visitors, 3 successful product brand launches, > 500 blog posts, > 500 podcast apperances (2012-2020).
Public Scholarship
BBC New Generations Thinker Short-list (2020).
Oxford TORCH Summer Academy (2019).
Columnist, Seen & Unseen (2023-).
Host, Naked Humanity, a podcast exploring theories of human nature, 75,000 downloads, 2018-2020.
Influencer, publish philosophy content to 40,000 + followers, 2018-2020.
Education
PhD, University of Oxford (2020)
MTS, Boston University (2014)
High Honours BA, Dartmouth College (2010)
Academic Publications
“Rescuing Metaphysics for Pragmatists: Interpreting William James’s Pure Experience as a Metaphysical Concept that Bars Reificiation and Opens discourse to Pragmatic Goods,” forthcoming at Transactions of CS Peirce (2024).
“Affects are Autotelic: Queering Antonio Damasio’s Telic Account of Affect and its Cognitivist and Functionalist Implications for Theory of Religion,” Under Review at Critical Research on Religion (2023).
The Will to Experience Transcendence: A Pragmatic Analysis of Jean Wahl’s Attempt—and Failure—to Secularise Religious (Kierkegaardian) Transcendence,” Under review at Comparative and Continental Philosophy (2023).
With Tsedal Neeley, “Timnit Gebru: SILENCED No More on AI Bias and the Harms of Large Language Models.” Case # 9-422-085. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review.
“To Naturalize is to Differentiate: How Recent Advances in Cognitive Science Provice a More Plural Basis for Theorizing Religion” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (30: 1) 2018.
“Metaphysics Matters: Metaphysics and Soteriology in Jerome Stone’s and Donald Crosby’s Varieties of Religious Naturalism” Zygon (49: 2) 2014.
Awards
Ian Ramsey Centre John Templeton Foundation Grant, 2015-2017.
Institute for Religion in an age of Science Scholarship, 2013.
Carr Scholarship, 2013.
Huayu Enrichment Scholarship, 2011.
Uthman Prize for Most Outstanding Undergraduate Research, 2010.
NASA Space Grant, 2009.