About
I know what it means to outgrow the story you built.
I’m Paige Williams, an applied researcher, strategist, entrepreneur, filmmaker, and bestselling author developing the emerging field of Narrative Intelligence.
For more than a decade, I built AudPop, a media technology company that grew into a global community of more than 80,000 filmmakers and creators. I know what it feels like to build something ambitious, become identified with it, and eventually realize the life you created may no longer fit who you are becoming.
That founder experience now informs my work with leaders and teams navigating innovation, uncertainty, resistance, consequential decisions, and the question of what comes next. My work explores how the stories we inherit, absorb, construct, and repeat shape what we notice, what we believe is possible, the decisions we make, and how we lead.
I’m the author of The Twelve Creative Keys and host of 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project, an ongoing inquiry into one central question: How malleable are the stories we live by, and what does it take to change one?
I’ve navigated growth, creativity, leadership, collapse, reinvention, and starting again. If something no longer fits, that is often where the real work begins.
— Paige
At a glance
Credentials
- Creator
- Narrative Intelligence framework
- Author
- The Twelve Creative Keys — #1 Amazon Best Seller, second edition
- Founder
- Built and led AudPop for twelve years
- Community
- 80,000+ filmmakers and creators served through AudPop
- Archive
- 14,000 short films in the AudPop platform archive
- Host
- 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project
- Clients & stages
- Microsoft, Nasdaq, ALPS, Montana Chamber of Commerce, University of Montana
My work
What I do
Strategic Advisory
Private strategic partnership for innovators leading complex, original, or high-stakes work without a playbook.
Speaking
Keynotes and facilitated experiences from a keynote speaker on leadership and creative change.
Organizations
Workshops, executive sessions, and retreats for teams navigating change, growth, and reinvention.
100 Stories
An ongoing inquiry with leaders, creators, and researchers into how malleable the stories we live by really are.
The framework
What is Narrative Intelligence?
Narrative Intelligence is the capacity to recognize the narratives shaping how you perceive and interpret what is happening, discern their influence, remain flexible when circumstances change, exercise meaningful agency, and translate new understanding into action.
For leaders, that matters because the stories we operate from influence the decisions we make, the possibilities we can see, and the cultures we help create.
The book
The Twelve Creative Keys
The Twelve Creative Keys grew from my own experience of building, creating, losing, changing direction, and beginning again. It is a #1 Amazon bestseller for women navigating transition.
The twelve keys offer practical ways to work with uncertainty, resistance, creativity, identity, and the moments when the old way of doing things no longer fits.
The assessment
How the Narrative Intelligence Assessment works
The assessment is a starting point — a structured way to see the story you are currently leading from, before deciding what to do about it. It lives with the tools and programs at StoryKeys.
1
Answer honestly
A series of prompts about how you interpret, decide, and act — not who you wish you were, but how you actually operate today.
2
See your profile
Your responses are mapped against the five capacities of Narrative Intelligence — SEE, SORT, EXPAND, CHOOSE, and LIVE — so you can see where your narrative capacity is strong and where it is narrow.
3
Know where to work
You leave with a clearer picture of the story you are leading from, and a practical sense of which capacity to build next.
Private Strategic Advisory
For work that keeps evolving.
A six-month private thinking partnership for founders, researchers, executives, creators, and leaders navigating complex, original, or high-stakes work as the decisions, conditions, and questions continue to change.
Inquire about Strategic Advisory