WHAT I BELIEVE

I’m Anna Stoecklein. I explore humanity’s inner and outer worlds — and tell stories about how they are connected.

My work begins from a deep belief in the goodness of people, and the common heart that lives within each of us.

One of my core strengths is translating complex, often layered realities into stories that people from all walks of life can understand, feel, and connect with.

I do this by exploring what makes us different, and what makes us the same. Even when speaking about gender, race, or ability, my narratives move beyond these distinctions so that every human can relate to the human on the other end of the story.

We live in a world where the body you were born with (gender, color, ability, sexuality) plays a significant role in your life experiences.. as does what year it is and where you were born. Our cultures — and the systems they have produced — shape people’s lives in profoundly different ways.

So we must tell stories about these systems and the ways they impact people’s lives, but we must also go deeper than that.

To tell stories that people can truly hear — and to create changes that truly last — we must speak to the heart.

WHAT I DO

You might call me a “people person” – not because I love crowds, but because one of my gifts is seeing this shared humanity in everyone I meet. 

Some of my other gifts include holding complexity, connecting dots, and translating big, tangled realities into stories people can feel.

So far, I’ve mainly expressed this through audio storytelling (podcasts). I also host panels, lead interviews and talks, and write. I’ve done this work through my own platform, The Story of Woman, as well alongside organisations including the Isumataq Collective, Mission Based Media and Trouble Club.

In 2022, I launched The Story of Woman, an award-winning podcast I built independently from the ground up – from a single idea to a globally recognised platform. 

Having trained as a nurse, I started the podcast with nothing but a vision and fierce determination to make complex ideas more accessible through human conversation.

Since then, I’ve had the honour of interviewing figures including Hillary Clinton and Cherie Blair, alongside Olympians, Nobel Peace Prize laureates, activists, academics, entrepreneurs and changemakers from around the world.

Most recently, I partnered with Orchid Project to travel to Kenya and explore why FGM/C persists, the forces that sustain it, and the people working at the forefront of change. The resulting series has been recognised across every award it has been submitted for.

Today, I work with humanitarian organisations, purpose-driven companies, and individuals to transform complexity into stories that build understanding, connection, and action.

If looking, you’ll likely find me in a forest, on a dance floor or simply walking through the streets of London chatting with new friends I’ve met along the way.

But enough about me – what about you? If something here resonates, I’d love to hear from you.

I’m open to collaborations, interviews, partnerships, or simply chats about life, love and the world we’re shaping together. 

Please say hello!

HOW I GOT HERE

My journey, like all of ours, has not been linear.

I was born and raised in middle America — the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri.

For the first ~30 years of my life, I largely followed the script of the culture I was born into. I became a nurse and married to my “college sweetheart”. Together we moved first to New York City, then London where I live today.

Though I was generally happy, I always felt a bit restless, like there was something deep inside me forgotten but stirring, longing to get out.

March 2020 comes around and I begin reading more ever – specifically, books about the world we live in, and how this distinction of gender impacts people differently, depending on the body they were born into.

For the first time in my life, I began to understand the world around me. Or, more specifically, I began to see the wider context of my life experiences – the script I had been blindly operating from. With this awareness came clarity, peace, and a fierce determination to share what I was learning with other people so that they too could better understand their scripts, and begin to rewrite them if they choose to.

Though I’d only worked in healthcare up until this point, and had never interviewed anyone in my life, I decided to start a podcast that made the ideas in this book more accessible.

It went better than I ever could have dreamed. Soon I moved beyond authors to interview politicians, entrepreneurs, activists, athletes and creatives. Exactly one year after launching the podcast, I conducted my first ever in-person interview … with Hillary Clinton and Cherie Blair.

One year after that I was in Kenya, speaking to members of Maasai and Somali communities about their lived experiences with FGM/C, piecing together a narrated series that went on to be recognised in the four out of four awards it was submitted to.

Now, I work with humanitarian organisations all around the world to translate confusion, complexity and fear into awareness, understanding and love.

As a child I would run around the neighbourhood with a video camera, convincing people to play various roles in my storylined visions.

I lost that part of myself for a while, following the cultural script instead of my heart. 

These past years have simply been a return to who I was always meant to be. 

The only reason these “successes” matter to me is because they are signals that I am moving in the true direction of my heart.

We all have our own life compasses, located deep inside our chests. It’s just a matter of seeing the script we were born into, and choosing to deepen into that one .. or not.