by Dr. Dennis Rebelo
Chief Learning Officer
Berkshire Innovation Center
There are several vaults on the campus of MASS MoCA. I mean giant, supersized, used-to-hold-lots-of-money kind of safes. They are so big that 3 or more people could eat dinner in one! I am unsure of the locations or conditions of all these vaults, but I do know that there was one that was made just for me. It’s not something I expected.
I am the Berkshire Innovation Center’s CLO, which translates into chief learning officer, doc-on-demand, in some cases, professor, and in all cases my role is to aid the community by developing innovative educational programming supported by partners like MIT, The Mass Tech Collaborative, General Dynamics, and the US Economic Development Administration.
When the Berkshire Innovation Center team visited MASS MoCA, we were interested in the 2nd floor vacancy but soon discovered a newer main floor option was available for our interactive technology demonstrations and experiential learning space called “BIC Works”. We swiftly secured our spot on campus.
What we did not expect was that our new space on the campus would offer a vault. Even more surprisingly - for me - was walking into this learning space one day to discover that the title of my book Story Like You Mean It lit up the vault in the same bright yellow and super red colors from the book’s cover. Soon after, it was decided I’d be hosting My Story Vault the Podcast, officially launching January 2025.
I am myself, no stranger to story, though I was originally a hard science kiddo. I have helped countless individuals discover and craft life-affirming personal narratives for: career transitions, public speaking and leadership positions. I taught my 1st college class as a guest lecturer in an engineering class at Providence College - a scary event in my life to be sure (so many adults)- but I eventually turned to applied psychology, humanistic psychology and systems thinking for my Ph.D. experience. I saw that there was a more complicated topic than physics, namely, people at work, and that answering the prompt: tell me about yourself, was perhaps a sign for me to use my hard science brain to soften-up the experience of personalized storytelling.
Over the last two years my book, Story Like You Mean It, has been translated into Chinese, German and the audio rights were authorized to create an Audible version to help those readers-turned-listeners consume its content. It’s essentially a guide to express who a person is and how to do so meaningfully in order to showcase an individual’s unique value and worth.
My life has been richly filled with experiences where my storytelling concepts and methodologies have been used by NFL players, for high stakes speeches, by tech and university leaders and I was even invited to be a co-founder in the Sports Mind Institute. I am grateful for these opportunities to support the storytelling of others and contribute to the process of unpacking lived experiences. By helping sports celebrities make sense of their key life moments, their narratives emerged as powerful reminders that sports was only part of their story.
I am a teacher at heart. I believe that formulas and frameworks can help people do math, do technical problem solving better and enhance their storytelling efforts. FORBES even noted: “Dr. Dennis Rebelo provides the guidance you need to hone your storytelling chops in Story Like You Mean It. Reinvent the way you present yourself to the world with a narrative creation formula that’s worked for Dr. Rebelo’s high-profile, successful clients for years. One part theory, 10 parts insights, and 1000 times more fun than your last public speaking appearance, this book will ensure you always know what to say and how to say it.”
Back to my vault. Typically, I do not like the word “my”, just the same, the BIC’s Executive Director, Ben Sonse, said: “hey I built this for you, the sign and everything, it’s yours, do your thing Doc”! Accordingly, I now have a vault and I guess it’s mine to do something with, something of value. I decided the answer was to bring key contributors to the BIC into the vault to do what I’ve been doing for years, to unpack the power of story from people’s lives and synthesize their stories to their work in the Berkshires community.
Ben and I have decided to host 50 individuals at BIC Works on the campus of MASS MoCA. These invitees will be individuals who are paramount to the work we share at the Berkshire Innovation Center. Through long form dialogue - in the vault of course - their motivations, key life moments, and current rationale for working in the Berkshires will become center stage. We call the education we do at the BIC “learning in the fringe” because it's a space in between the higher ed and industry. These conversations are part of that work.
Though we are keeping the official names of those being invited to My Story Vault under wraps for now, I can make some predictions about what listeners will learn from the My Story Vault Podcast:
Much like with the Sports Mind Institute when I worked with Coach Tony Dungy, the stories and life moments that people will likely share during these conversions will be less predictable than even they suspect;
The motivation for leaders and innovators to contribute to our Berkshires’ community may shed light on the reality that our region is a wonderful place to live, work and collaborate with others;
The power of “community feeling” and “contribution to work” are connected;
Everyone in our community - at all stages and ages of life - can and wants to be somebody who is known as being competent at something;
When we become more receptive and exploratory in our relationships, we can learn what key skills someone else has to offer;
Stories are sense-making, helpful and provide ways to rethink how we make decisions in the “now” and “future,”;
Personalized stories can model how we can all reclaim self-authorship in our lives;
Stories are viral; like technology that spreads rapidly, useful stories can and will spread to help all of us realize what we have right here in the Berkshires - from people who are living in the region and from those who opted to “jump in” - and help us build a resilient technology-enabled ecosystem in these lovely hills.