Bio
Mike Bonifer is one of the world’s leading practitioners of quantum storytelling, an emerging field that accounts for how stories form in networks, affect behaviors, and are likely to shape the future. He and and his BigStory network design the frameworks for community-created narratives that result in positive, uplifting futures.
Bonifer has been a storyteller his entire life. Beginning with the homemade theme park his family built on the farm where he grew up in the U.S Heartland, later a long association with the Walt Disney Company, and his current work in metaverse storytelling, he has been guided by, and guided others, with the stories he shares and his process for sharing them.
At Disney was the senior publicist on the landmark motion picture, Tron, the producer of a cult classic documentary, Computers Are People, Too, author of The Art of Tron, and a founding producer of The Disney Channel.
In 2007, he served as Chief Storyteller for Live Earth: Concerts for the Environment. That same year, he launched GameChangers, a consultancy which brought improv theater techniques to business. In 2015, GameChangers evolved into bigSTORY, a network of quantum storytelling specialists who provide companies and communities around the world with strategic storytelling guidance.
In 2018, with a team of engineers and cognitive scientists based in Pittsburgh, he launched 21 Day Story (www.21daystory.com), a mobile storytelling platform that helps diverse, geographically dispersed groups co-create remedies for their biggest organizational challenges.
Bonifer has taught improvisation for business and quantum storytelling at the University of Notre Dame, USC, NYU, UC-Irvine, New Mexico State University, and Cal-State Fullerton. He has written or co-written six books, including The Art of Tron, GameChangers--Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, CTRL Shift and No More Meetings! He has been a keynote speaker and presenter at events such as SXSW, the Connected Enterprise Conference, the USC Annenberg Innovation Summit, the Applied Improvisation Conference, and Senior 100 Living.
His current writing and personal storytelling include a screenplay about his family’s homemade Heartland theme park, and several collections of poetry to be published in the coming years. He is the quantum storyteller for Cryptosaurs, a metaverse story world that launches in September 2022, and the author of its foundational text, an epic poem entitled The Book of Monsters.
Deeply devoted to his family, his community and his country, Bonifer believes we live our most rewarding lives when your story and my story become our story, and we realize possibilities neither of us could have imagined on our own.
