AN EXTRAORDINARY SPEAKER
WHO IS TRUE TO HIS NAME!
Phoenix is a master storyteller and educator whose work is grounded in lived experience — embracing life’s questions, challenges, beauty, and transformation. For nearly 30 years, he has inspired thousands through heart-centered presentations that educate and uplift, weaving story with truth to spark healing, connection, and change.
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His work addresses urgent and real-world community needs, including LGBTQ+ diversity, empowerment, resilience, mental health, trauma, and substance use prevention. Speaking with vulnerability and hope, Phoenix draws from his personal journey of recovery from addiction, complex trauma, catastrophic loss, and socio-economic hardship — a healing path that began in April 1985.
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As the Community Education Coordinator for the Town of New Paltz’s Office for Community Wellness, Phoenix designs and leads innovative programs that foster wellness and social connection. He also coordinates the New Paltz Opioid Overdose Prevention and Response Team and collaborates with dozens of organizations across Ulster County and the Mid-Hudson Region to address mental health, intimate partner violence, suicide prevention, and substance use — all through a trauma-informed, resilience-focused lens.
Phoenix first discovered the power of storytelling in 1990 while working with youth in a YWCA summer program. Moved by their response, he pursued graduate studies at SUNY’s School of Social Welfare. During that time (1992–1995), he met Dr. Annabelle Nelson, creator of the evidence-based substance abuse prevention program Storytelling for Empowerment. Supported by a five-year federal grant, Dr. Nelson organized three national conferences and a Train-the-Trainer session featuring storytellers from across the country. Phoenix participated in all four events, presenting on personal myth as a tool for recovery and resilience in Prescott, Arizona, in 1997.
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Throughout his career, Phoenix has remained a devoted advocate, educator, and story weaver — gifted at bridging divides and cultivating compassion. Audiences describe his storytelling as captivating, moving, and deeply transformative. Whether teaching, facilitating, or speaking, he creates space for people to step outside habitual narratives and reconnect with deeper truths — within themselves and their communities.
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In 2025, Phoenix was honored to be selected as a Storyteller in Residence for the New York State Trauma-Informed Care Resource Center, where he now shares his insights and experience with peers and professionals across the state.
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To learn how Phoenix can support your community, school, organization, or event, reach out to explore collaboration opportunities. His presence and passion are not only inspiring — they are contagious.
DYNAMIC. DEDICATED. PASSIONATE.
Phoenix is a dynamic speaker and storyteller, who is dedicated to fostering hope, healing, and transformation - individually and collectively. Please watch the videos below to hear Phoenix share how these core principles relate to his journey, the work, and the power of story.
