The Backstory

How I stumbled into storytelling

Willa Kammerer

I majored in Italian in college, though I never had any intention to teach, translate, or otherwise professionally pursue the language after college.

I frankly didn’t know what I wanted to do upon graduation, but my small liberal arts college in Vermont had instilled in me an ethic of stewardship and giving back. And so as an Environmental Studies minor with graduation dawning, getting a job at an environmental nonprofit felt like an acceptable answer and working plan.

During my final semesters of college, I immersed myself in the writing—in Italian—of my thesis, The History of Tuscan Olive-Oil Production and Prospects for its Future.

One day, hunched over my laptop in a study carrel, translating stacks of books, articles, and handwritten notes from informal interviews I’d conducted the previous summer with farmers in the olive groves of Tuscany into a coherent narrative,

I had an “aha” moment: this is journalism, and I like this.

While majoring in Italian did not provide me with a clear, red-carpeted career path unfolding after graduation, it did offer me a great degree of flexibility: to study many things and get a true liberal arts education while still satisfying the requirements of my major.

The Italian department was tiny, with only six other graduates my year, so it afforded me close, trusting relationships with my advisor and the rest of the department faculty. When I met with my advisor to discuss preliminary topics for my thesis, I let her know I was not interested a traditional topic, like analysis of Dante’s works or Bocaccio’s Decameron.

I wanted to pursue something that brought together my interest in history, food, culture, and the environment; something that felt modern, connected, and relevant.

After several meetings and some preliminary research, I honed in on Tuscan olive-oil production as my topic.

I was interested in the history—how it came to be—but also the future: What did climate change mean for olive farming in Tuscany? How did the industry combat pervasive fraud in the global oil industry, with soy and seed oils often labeled as EVOO? Thanks to this flexibility and these relationships, my advisor signed off on my topic, if with some skepticism.

Without a roadmap, but with a promise to deliver on, I began to search our college library for any mention of olive trees and olive oil.

From there, I knit together a basic sketch of the global history of olive-oil production, and the important role that olive oil has played in Italian culture. But that would not a thesis make.

Majoring in Italian came with another perk: the opportunity to teach Italian for a couple of summers on an enrichment trip for American high school students to Oxford, Paris, and Tuscany—a “free” ticket to Europe, with the ability to extend my travels beyond the program for as long as I liked.

And so, the summer before embarking on my final semester of thesis writing, the semester when I was going to pull it all together and really get down to writing, I planned to spend ten days on the ground in Tuscany to see what I could learn.

Prior to departure, I started digging, and found an online directory of all of the registered olive-oil producers in Tuscany. Some entries included email addresses (this was 2006, the pretty early days of email). I wrote dozens of emails introducing myself and describing my research, asking to visit my recipients’ farms. To my surprise, I started getting emails back. “Yes, certo! We would love to host you! When will you be here?”

I got out a map of Tuscany, and pieced together an itinerary to visit eight farms, spending the night when welcomed.

I didn’t know the exact information I sought from these individuals generous enough to trust a foreigner and welcome me onto their farms and into their homes, but I had a gut sense that on the ground, immersed in the heart of the industry and my topic, is where I’d learn the most—and that I’d figure out how it all fit together later.

I learned about how grape vines and olive trees had historically been planted side-by-side in Tuscany, and passed through the generations; how small producers joined regional consortiums, and used shared machinery to process their small harvests; how in recent years one producer’s olive oil had taken on subtle notes of tomato, never before tasted in this region, which he attributed to the changing climate and hotter, drier summers.

Conversations, anecdotes, and photographs from the olive groves of Tuscany provided rich snapshots, vivid accounts that no book on the shelves of my college library could match.

But the history and facts that I’d pulled from these sources bolstered what I’d learned on the ground in Tuscany, and gave my field conversations and observations deeper context.

As I endeavored to intertwine these two planes of understanding into a cohesive narrative, I began to realize the power of interviewing, and interweaving multiple perspectives together to create something of greater value than the sum of individual parts.

Throughout college, and really as long as I can remember, I yearned to feel like I was making a positive impact, engaged in making the world a better place. I faithfully attended meetings of my college’s climate activism group, and sometimes volunteered to go door-to-door to support campus energy conservation initiatives.

But every time the signup sheet circulated during a meeting for a protest, I shrunk back in my chair with anxiety. The energy in the room amongst my peers preparing for the next big event was palpable, yet as I envisioned myself taking to the streets with signs, I felt like a fish out of water. I let the signup sheets pass by, and stayed on the sidelines. Every time, I was overcome by guilt, thinking of course this is what I should do if I cared.

Then, I had a small epiphany.

Just because I felt like a fraud holding a protest sign didn’t mean I didn’t care. Or that it was the only way to care. There could be value in listening as well as shouting. In asking questions. In distilling and weaving together information. In sharing perspectives to yield deeper understanding. Activism could take on more than one form.

Wearing the hat of student and researcher during my thesis explorations had given me license to follow my curiosity, to ask questions and discover answers. It opened me up to a broad range of perspectives that I never would have discovered had I, for example, been shouting about the industrialization of olive-oil production that was making it harder for small farmers to make a living and continue farming their land.

This role of storyteller—curious, open, questioning; weaving together disparate perspectives and information—came so naturally to me, and I’ve come to see it as my own most potent form of activism.

Why I continue to find storytelling so compelling—and critical:

We live in a time of polarization and division. In a time of more shouting than listening. But now, we need to listen more than ever. To seek to understand. At Firestarter Interactive, we believe in the power of examining issues from multiple perspectives, in openminded exploration. Through deep interviews from a broad set of vantage points, we’re able to draw unexpected connections, to find common ground. Our approach is predicated on the belief that if we come together we can create change, and positive social impact.

I invite you to learn more about our approach to finding common ground, and amplifying our clients’ visions for change through storytelling, by exploring this Case Study, which profiles our work with the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation. The film draws upon interviews with governors, nonprofit leaders, teachers, children, and parents to make a compelling case for the importance of high-quality early childhood education.

Next Up: The Pathway from Public Radio to Firestarter Interactive