Meet Stephanie Judd | Managing Partner of Wolf & Heron

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephanie Judd and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephanie, what role has risk played in your life or career?
What a great question! This has been on my mind a lot as I’ve been watching my toddler develop his own relationship with risk.

Courage is one of my most important values. I like to believe that my level of courage directly impacts how expansive and rich my life will be. When staring into the abyss of something risky, it’s courage that I draw upon to leap. Over time, I’ve explored ways to lean into my courage, and I’ve discovered that the real skill I’m developing is resilience. The more resilient I become, the more I believe that I’ll be able to get up if I fall, and the more tolerant I become of risk.

The most profound turning points in my life have been a result of risk-taking. When I was 24, I left a comfortable, well-paying job in tech consulting to become an unemployed tango dancer in Argentina. It was risky—I had no idea where it would take me—but I ended up living abroad for 6 years and becoming relatively fluent in Spanish. At 30, I leaped into the mess of online dating—an experiment fraught with risk to body, heart, and mind—but ultimately led me to a partner that has enriched my life in so many ways. When I leaped into entrepreneurship, I had very few guarantees, but seven years later, I’ve created a business that supports me, makes a difference, and allows me the opportunity to do meaningful work.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Wolf & Heron is a leadership development firm that leverages expertise in social psychology, influence, and facilitation to develop leaders who can effectively engage and inspire others.

We offer customized, people-focused programs, such as corporate training, public workshops, and executive coaching. Our clients transcend organizational profiles; we work with Fortune 100 companies to startups, small non-profits to large educational institutions­.

Our bread and butter is our Influential Storytelling program, which empowers professionals to use stories as a way to engage and inspire others. Over the years, we have developed a strong point of view on what makes a story influential and effective ways to craft and refine stories for that purpose. We love sharing this point of view with the world and helping leaders better motivate their teams.

Because we focus our leadership development on the tools and skills that will engage and inspire others, we are intentional about showcasing those same tools and skills in our program design and in the way we work with our clients. I like to think it’s this “meta-awareness” that sets us apart from other leadership development organizations. My favorite testimonial after an engagement is usually something along the lines of, “Wow! Not only did I learn something, but it was so fun and the time just flew by!”

As I look to the future, I’m excited about how our business is growing. Now that we have a strong foothold in helping leaders engage others with storytelling, we’re looking at other key moments where being inspirational makes a difference. We’ve helped several clients put together a high-quality conference both by applying our storytelling expertise to the macro-level conference arc, and by coaching individual speakers to be more effective presenters. We’re also developing a series of workshops designed to address the challenge of long, boring, unnecessary meetings that seem to plague the workplace; good meeting design and facilitation chops can work wonders on workplace meeting culture.

Of course, the journey of entrepreneurship hasn’t been easy. As a business, we were only 3 years old when the COVID pandemic shut down the world. In a matter of a few weeks, we lost nearly 90% of our revenue pipeline. But that crisis is also what inspired us to develop virtual offerings that ultimately led us to land global clients—something we hadn’t been able to do before the pandemic because of the practical limitations of scaling in-person experiences.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Well, I’m new to the Atlanta area myself! I moved here just a few months ago and then immediately had a baby, so most of my exploration thus far has been to toddler and baby-friendly environments. If friends of mine came to visit, we’d check out the Children’s Museum, the Aquarium, and my newest favorite, the spraygrounds in Roswell.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
This is where I say Go Blue! The University of Michigan has been an unbelievable source of support for us as we grow our business. The institution was one of our first big clients, and now it’s our longest-standing partnership. We’re proud of the program we’ve built in collaboration with the Ross School of Business, and have appreciated the opportunity to innovate and experiment with them over the years. But beyond the institution itself, the Michigan community across the globe is a huge resource and support system. Not only is my business partner, Kara, a fellow alumna, but we can also claim alumni as feedback partners, pilot participants, innovation collaborators, and clients.

Website: https://www.wolfandheron.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wolfandheron_leadership/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wolfandheron/

Facebook: https://facebook.com/wolfandheron