Joel de Wardeaux (Ward)

Joel has spent most of his adult life as an entrepreneur and assisting with many startup businesses. Although he attended law school, he focused his attention on things that were considered disruptive within any particular sector. This taught him that storytelling and creative arts do more at drawing people to ideas than anything else business academia was teaching. Because of this Joel found he had to do all the meaningful writing for companies, whether that be business plans, marketing copy or even technical information. He found that storytelling, whether true or hypothetical fiction, was the best way to reach the hearts and minds of others. Eventually, Joel decided to begin a storytelling journey in a bigger way. He trained under the Robert McKee method. McKee is the author of "Story", which is considered the bible of screenwriting. This led to Joel writing his debut screenplay (with several Hollywood producers showing interest) and soon to be literary book. Joel has also created a storytelling course based on McKee's "Story." Although it was originally designed for aspiring screenwriters, as Joel says, "the principles of storytelling that have held through the ages apply to every form, whether screen, stage or the written page."