“We are experts in “storifying” just about anything!” says Nisha Abdulla, co-founder of Ever After Learning.
Deeptha Vivekanand started Ever After Learning, in 2013 and Nisha joined in as co-founder in 2014. Ever After Learning – is a company that builds learning interventions based on narratives or stories.
Today Nisha tells us about “story-telling” as a business.
Can you tell us a little about yourself, your past work experiences and what you presently do?
I am a writer, storyteller and theatre practitioner. All of them allow me to live the story! Take even one out of my life, and I would feel less than whole.
In the past, I worked in retail as a consumer behaviour specialist. Even while I was in my full time job, I had been writing and doing plays for a while and had also discovered storytelling as an art form. So at some point I decided to plunge into the arts full time.
As a professional storyteller, I am the co-founder of Ever After Learning - a company that builds learning interventions based on narratives or stories. We conduct a lot of open sessions and workshops, but also work with schools and corporates for longer term projects. Deeptha Vivekanand began the company mid-2013 and I joined her as co-founder in Jan 2014.
Tell us about ‘Ever After Learning’. How did the idea for the venture come about?
Deeptha Vivekanand, the founder of Ever After Learning has been a professional storyteller since 2008 and at some point she wanted to formalise operations. A few months after she started operating as Ever After, she began looking for a co-founder and serendipitously she found me! Our shared passion to use stories to make learning fun brought us together!
What are your core services offered through the venture?
I'll answer this with some examples.
Let's say there's an entrepreneur who's looking to tell her story to investors, or consumers, we're the specialists to call to create a digital story of your start-up journey!
Or say a teacher is looking to make her classes more interesting, we bring in the stories to create interest and relevance for the student.
Or let's say a company is looking to communicate its core values to its employee base, we would be able to customise a program that involves stories of the founders, the leadership team as well as inspirational team members so that core values become a lived experience and not a set of words to memorise.
In other words, we are experts in “storifying” just about anything!
How long as it been since you started Ever After Learning. What were the initial challenges you faced?
Ever After began in mid-2013 and I joined on board as co-founder in Jan 2014. Our initial challenge was in explaining our services and its potency to prospective corporate clients. Schools and the education sector of course took to it easily, but corporates take some time in accepting anything new. But once they experience the power of a story themselves, they're usually on board for more!
Currently, our challenge is in finding the right people to help take Ever After forward. It's difficult to straight jacket our services since our modules are heavily customised, and hence to get the right person to manage projects across various kinds of businesses and education sector clients is difficult.
Where do you see yourself professionally in the next 5 years?
Still immersed in stories and storytelling!
What is a typical day at work like for you?
It varies really but typically there's some amount of writing - maybe a story for a school session or a story for our next corporate project. And this involves a lot of reading and research as well - both online and offline. Research is highly time consuming!
There'll be a meeting with Deeptha on the day's/week's agenda and that also usually involves taking feedback on the story I'm currently working on. We're constantly talking to each other about the stories that we're writing or prepping at the moment.
And then of course, there's the client meetings!
Can you leave our readers with a few thoughts…
There are so many inspiring stories that can be found here at Sheroes. We are riding a wonderful wave of access and opportunity at this point of time - I feel all of us owe it to ourselves, and more importantly owe it to the next generation of entrepreneurs, to tell our stories wherever and whenever we can! Let's share stories of our fears, our vulnerabilities, our quirks, our steps to success - both little and big!