Here’s Our Story
Something shifts when people gather around stories instead of problems…
We've seen it happen time and again in rooms across the world—and it never gets old.
Women factory workers in Kenya recognize the power and agency they already hold. Leadership teams find shared meaning in their organization’s origin story. Staff teams surface what they value most and design programs that reflect these values. Community members discover something new about their neighbors that changes how they see each other.
This is what story does that nothing else can: it closes the distance between us. Not through argument or analysis, but through the simple act of one person sharing authentically and another person truly listening. The “us and them” dissolves. What's left is just us.
Flame Tree Story exists to create those moments—and to support organizations as they carry forward what they discover, together. We do this through story gatherings that bring communities and teams together around shared topics, facilitated workshops that help organizations remember what works and imagine what's next, and strategic support that helps teams find clarity and move into action.
Meet the Founder
Whitney Fry, DrPH, MPH is a story catcher. She’s experienced the power of story in social change first hand at the intersection of global health, gender-based violence (GBV) prevention, and participatory research—in Kenya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Jordan, and beyond. From humanitarian response to global development, Whitney has worked in research, policy, and practice for a variety of NGOs, CBOs, for-profits, and academic institutions. She brings real-world experience and academic rigor to her story-focused work with organizations, including 35+ speaking and facilitation engagements, 10+ peer review publications, and adjunct faculty placements at the University of North Carolina and Fordham University.
Whitney has spent her career in rooms where the stakes are high, the pace is relentless, and the meaning gets buried under the machinery. What she kept seeing–across program evaluations, strategy sessions, and facilitated workshops—was that reports and roadmaps alone struggle to move the needle. Change happens when someone shares an experience, an honest moment of truth. This is when the room shifts: defenses fall and the real conversation begins.
Whitney built Flame Tree Story on research rigor, facilitation depth, and a belief that story is not a soft add-on to serious work; it is the serious work. Story unlocks organizational memory, imagination, and possibility.
What Guides Us?
Connection
We design experiences that help people feel seen, heard, and valued — because connection is both the means and the outcome of meaningful work.
Possibility
We focus on what’s working and what could be, helping teams surface their own wisdom and move forward with energy and imagination.
Story
We use story as both method and mindset — a way of remembering what matters most and opening new pathways forward.
Collaboration
Every engagement is a co-creation. Change grows through partnership, built on respect, curiosity, and trust.