LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!!!
On February 11th at 7:00 pm ET The Story Collider is hosting the ULTIMATE story slam showdown. All-Star storytellers from far and wide–all members of our Board of Directors– compete for the grand prize of being able to say they are the storytelling champion and to raise money for The Story Collider.
Donate to vote for your favorite storyteller (or storytellers) throughout the night and see who will emerge as the story slam winner! All proceeds from the night go to support The Story Collider’s programs.
Hosted by Story Collider board member and two-time All-Star Slam champ Latasha Wright!
Register for free and get ready for a night of amazing storytelling!
If you can’t join us on February 11 or don’t know who to vote for, please make a donation to Story Collider to support our work in 2025!
Stories by:
Dr. Krishna Pakala is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at Boise State University (Boise, Idaho). He currently serves as the Interim Associate Dean-in-Residence for the College of Innovation and Design. He was the Director for the Industrial Assessment Center at Boise State University. He served as the Faculty in Residence for the Engineering and Innovation Living Learning Community (2014 - 2021). He was the inaugural Faculty Associate for Mobile Learning and the Faculty Associate for Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning. He was the recipient of the Foundation Excellence Award, David S. Taylor Service to Students Award and Golden Apple Award from Boise State University. He was also the recipient of 2023 National Outstanding Teacher Award, ASEE PNW Outstanding Teaching Award, ASEE Mechanical Engineering division’s Outstanding New Educator Award and several course design awards. He serves as the campus representative and was the past-Chair for the ASEE PNW Section. His academic research interests include innovative teaching and learning strategies, use of emerging technologies, and mobile teaching and learning strategies.
La Profe Ana Maria Porras is a biomedical engineering professor, communicator, and science artist. She leads the Tissue-Microbe Interactions lab at the University of Florida. Her group engineers models of disease to study human-microbe interactions in the context of the human gut microbiome, tropical infectious diseases, and global health. They also develop bilingual and artistic strategies to engage communities locally and globally. Over the past 5 years, Dr. Porras has been teaching microbiology using her own crocheted art. She is also the co-founder and Senior Advisor of the Latinx in Biomedical Engineering community. She was selected as an IF/THEN AAAS Ambassador for girls and women in STEM and was honored with a statue at the Smithsonian Institution within that program. Prior to arriving in Florida, Prof. Porras was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University. She holds a B.S. in biomedical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Masters and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, where she was also an American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellow. She loves to read, dance, travel, craft, swim, and, above all, eat ice cream.
Ken Haller is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine and Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital. He serves on the boards of the Arts & Education Council of Greater St. Louis, the Saint Louis University Library Associates, and the Gateway Media Literacy Project. He has also served on the board of the Missouri Foundation for Health and as President of the St. Louis Pediatric Society; the Missouri Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics; PROMO, Missouri’s statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization; the Gateway Men’s Chorus, St. Louis’s gay men’s chorus: and GLMA, the national organization of LGBT health care professionals. He is a frequent spokesperson in local and national media on the health care needs of children and adolescents. Ken is also an accomplished actor, produced playwright, and acclaimed cabaret performer. In 2015 he was named Best St. Louis Cabaret Performer by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and he has taken his one-person shows to New York, Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco. His special interests include cultural competency, health literacy, the relationship of medicine to the arts, the effects of media on children, and the special health needs of LGBT youth. His personal mission is Healing.
Erin Barker is a founding member of The Story Collider’s board, in addition to her role as executive director. As a storyteller, she is the first woman to win The Moth's GrandSLAM storytelling competition twice. Her stories have been featured on public radio multiple times, including on PRX's The Moth Radio Hour, and on podcasts such as The Moth, RISK, Family Ghosts, and many more. One of her stories was included in The New York Times-bestselling book The Moth: 50 True Stories. Erin received her master of fine arts in creative writing from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine in summer 2016.
Dr. Paula Croxson is a neuroscientist, award-winning science communicator and storyteller with expertise in academic research, nonprofit work and science communication. She is President at Stellate Communications. Paula has an M.A. from the University of Cambridge and a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford. She was an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai for 5 years before shifting her career focus to science communication and public engagement with science, first at Columbia University and then at the Dana Foundation. She is passionate about communicating science in meaningful and effective ways, and fostering diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in science. She is also a musician, playing flute in alternative rock bands Wax Majestic and Marlowe Grey, and a long-distance open water swimmer. The swimming is apparently for “fun”. You can learn more about her at paulacroxson.com.
Dawn J. Fraser is a nationally acclaimed storyteller, speaker, and communications coach based in San Jose, CA. As the Founder & CEO of Fraser’s Edge, Inc., she empowers businesses, thought leaders, and advocates to elevate their leadership potential through the power of storytelling. Her clients have included entities such as Google, the Gates Foundation, and Spotify, along with a host of notable celebrities. She also serves as a Senior Producer at the Stanford Storytelling Project and a Lead Instructor with The Moth. Dawn holds a Bachelor’s degree from UCLA, a Master in Public Policy (MPP) from Harvard’s Kennedy School, and was a featured among the nation’s top change makers as a speaker at TED@NYC.