Faculty

Shona Russell (Adelaide, South Australia), has made narrative approaches to therapy and community work her focus for 25 years through her work in non-government organizations and in independent practice. Along with Gaye Stockell and Peggy Sax, Shona has presented two Extending Narrative Practice: Refreshing the Spirit of the Work workshops in Vermont, and is involved in the development of our Rich Story Development series. She was an active member of The Dulwich Centre teaching faculty, where she and her close colleague Maggie Carey played a primary role in developing the skills practice component of the International Training programme. In 2008, Shona joined Michael White, Maggie Carey and Rob Hall in Narrative Practices Adelaide. Shona has been teaching workshops on narrative supervision for many years and is particularly interested in bringing to life the practices of narrative therapy in supervision contexts. She has authored and co-authored a range of articles.

Peggy Sax, Ph.D. (Middlebury, Vermont), is the founder and Executive Director of Re-authoring Teaching - the global learning community of narrative therapy practitioners, teachers, and enthusiasts that is represented on this website. She continually crafts this companion Re-authoring Teaching website to build a network with an array of Narrative Training including The Collab Salon, Online Courses, Faculty Offerings,  Higher Education, Workshops and Narrative Camp. Having apprenticed herself to narrative therapy since the early 1990s, Peggy also works in independent practice as a Licensed Psychologist, consultant, international teacher and international trainer. Peggy is the author of several articles, and the book, Re-authoring Teaching: Creating a Collaboratory. Whether online, on-the-road or within her beautiful home state of Vermont, it gives her great joy to bring together favorite people, ideas and practices – to learn, engage, play and replenish together.

Gaye Stockell, M.A., Sydney, Australia, started her exploration of narrative ideas and practices 20 years ago in Sydney, whilst working in community mental health services. Working in partnership, she introduced narrative conversations to people experiencing severe mental illness concerns and as a new approach to therapeutic group work. In her independent practice as a registered psychologist, Gaye continued to explore narrative practices through her conversations with families, couples and individuals as well with the counselors, psychologists and social workers she meets in consultations. Her consultation/supervision work has been in the areas of sexual assault, mental health, drug and alcohol, adolescence and services for people who are homeless.

Maria Tiunova (Moscow, Russia) comes from a business perspective. Having spent over 15 years in advertising, doing strategic planning and people and culture work at Leo Burnett Creative Agency, she became fascinated by narrative ideas and started applying bits of them to her work. In 2016, she founded Communa Project meant to strengthen organisational communities through narrative practices. Maria does organisational and career counseling, and has a broader interest to working with communities in different contexts.

Larry Zucker, LCSW, presented a 2015 Vermont workshop  and subsequently created the online course Escaping Blame: Helping couples develop account-ability. Larry has been practicing therapy and training therapists for over 30 years.  He is a frequent presenter for- and participant in- The Collab Salon including Tales of Integration with Lynne Rosen (September, 2016), Introducing the new online course with Peggy Sax (August, 2016) and Escaping Blame (February, 2015). Larry's background in social work and community organizing led him to see people in context, and to focus on strength and resiliency.  Larry is committed to escaping blaming frames of reference in a field that encourage therapists to see people and relationships as problematic.  He prefers seeing people as embedded in normal problems of living, full of untapped skill and knowledge for creating the lives and relationships they want, despite difficulties encountered, and to seeing therapy as a relationship that helps bring forth that knowledge.