The right story changes things - starting with mine
Hi, I’m Joana — a German-Portuguese mom of two, solopreneur, storytelling obsessive, and someone who took the scenic route to building the career she actually wanted.
I grew up between two cultures — German precision and Portuguese warmth — which basically means I show up exactly on time AND greet you with kisses when I do. I’ve ALWAYS been drawn to people, places, and the kind of conversations where someone says something that makes you go: WAIT, TELL ME MORE!
The second I graduated high school, I left my hometown — and never went back.
I studied at an American college with campuses in Madrid and Boston, landed my first job in New York City at a global communications agency, and spent four years soaking it aaaaalll in before the pull of Europe called me home. Not to the town I grew up in, but to BERLIN — creative, bursting-at-the-seams-with-startups Berlin.
How storytelling found me (or: how I realized it had been there all along)
For years, I didn’t think of myself as a “storyteller.”
In New York, working in healthcare communications, I was just doing my job — reading dense clinical trial data and regulatory documents, then finding a way to make them digestible and human. I learned to ask: What’s the ONE THING that actually matters here? What’s the story buried in all this complexity?
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was learning to distill.
To simplify without dumbing down. To find the emotional core in even the most technical content.
Then I moved to Berlin and joined a boutique agency curating innovation conferences — including TEDx Berlin. We coached speakers, corporate leaders, C-suite executives who needed to shape their message in a way that captivates an auditorium.
And that’s when it clicked. I’d been doing this ALL ALONG.
Finding the story. Stripping away the excess. Helping someone say the thing that makes a room lean in and pay attention. I saw it in real time on those stages: what makes people put down their phones, what makes an idea stick, what makes a message move from “interesting” to “I need to tell someone about this.”
And I was hooked. 🔥
After that, I moved into brand strategy consulting — six years working with Porsche, Audi, Nestlé, Deutsche Telekom. I learned how to build brand narratives at scale, facilitate strategic workshops with up to 50 participants, and bring clarity to the messiest of briefs.
It was incredible training.
What I do now
Today, I work with individuals and founder-led brands on the story that could change things:
>I help people craft presentations that need to win over a room.
>I find the narrative buried in a scattered bio and set someone up for success in their next professional chapter.
>I work with small brands to discover the narrative layer that makes an audience fall in love with them.
My approach is built on a decade of experience at the intersection of brand strategy and live storytelling, distilled into my proprietary EDGE Method — a framework that uncovers your Essence, Difference, Gold, and Expression to build a story that’s unmistakably, magnetically YOU.
Because I believe that the stories we tell about ourselves are truly the most powerful tools we have.
If you’re sitting on a story that could change things —
for your career, your brand, your next big moment — I’d love to help you find it.
The right story changes the room.
The right story changes the brand.
The right story changes the career.
Let’s find yours.