Brett Pierce

Brett Pierce is the founder and Executive Director of Meridian Stories, a Digital Storytelling nonprofit for middle and high schoolers that challenges students to create digital narratives around core curricular goals. Pierce recently authored his first book with Heinneman Publishing, Expanding Literacy: "Bringing Digital Storytelling into Your Classroom," and wrote the new National Geographic Storytelling for Impact course series which in 2022 won the Gold Anthem Award.

Pierce has spent much of his professional life at Sesame Workshop in New York City, serving as a Co-Executive Producer on media projects about literacy, math, science, and conflict-resolution for youth around the world, including projects in China, Macedonia, Indonesia, Poland, Iraq, and Ecuador. He recently completed work with the Abu Dhabi-based Executive Team on the production of Sesame Street in the United Arab Emirates.

In 2021, Pierce co-led a series of digital storytelling workshops with both the Hong Kong diaspora and Iraqi CSOs about communication strategies for the humanizing the pro-democracy movement and civil participation respectively. Pierce led the Kakuma-based creative and production teams in the development and production of a radio drama – Sawa Shabab - targeting youth in the Kakuma Refugee Camp about gender equity issues, life skills and co-existence. This is the fifth season of this drama, which originated in South Sudan, that Pierce has co-executive produced.

Pierce has a BA from Kenyon College, and Masters Degrees from Middlebury College (English) and Columbia University (Education), and teaches an annual intensive at Colby College called ‘Developing Media for Social Change.’ He lives in Freeport, Maine.