When Thaler looked through the 2-way glass into a focus group room during 10th grade Career Day, she thought, "Wow, you can actually learn why people do what they do!" That excitement led her to leave high school early and enroll in the S. I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University at the age of 16.
Today, Thaler is a leading voice in the field of organizational narrative and storysharing, and an expert in developing and delivering messages. Her Heart, Head & Hand™ framework for persuasive communication is helping smart leaders throughout the world engage audiences and achieve policy goals, increase sales, and raise funds.
Thaler elicits and recognizes the discrete stories that embody an organization's larger narrative. She assists clients in finding stories, and then finding the patterns in stories. She helps build smart and narrative organizations, where brand identity is clear and appealing; audiences are quickly and sustainably engaged; leaders appreciate and strategically share stories; and knowledge is easily gathered and shared.
Thaler facilitated the opening plenary of the most recent Smithsonian Institution Conference on Organizational Storytelling. She is featured in the book, Storied Careers: 40+ Story Practitioners Talk About Applied Storytelling, and is a Contributor to PhilanTopic, the Philanthropy News Digest blog, on the topic of organizational narrative.
Thaler began her career combining her education with her passion for social change and issue advocacy. Her curiosity, quest for authenticity, and desire to help clients achieve strong results has led her progression from political organizing to values-based communication, to finding and sharing stories, to building narrative organizations. She is especially interested in the role trust plays as a motivator, and partners with her brother, Jim, a brain researcher (MIT at 16), to glean insight into motivation and persuasion. They blog together at Neurocooking.
Thaler is a frequent guest lecturer at the Columbia University Graduate Program in Strategic Communications. She is a member of the Society for the Advancement of Consulting, an Inaugural Member of the National Network of Consultants to Grantmakers and a Founding Member of the American College of Women's Health Physicians. She is also a Special Advisor to Exhale.
Thaler is a long-time resident of Hoboken, NJ, and a more recent resident of Unadilla, NY. She is locally active as a member of the New York Appleseed Advisory Board, and a member of the 2011 Selection Committee of the New York Times Nonprofit Excellence Awards. Thaler always crosses the street to walk on the sunny side. And she has a cat named Truthiness.