Interventional storyteller and cultural strategist
Helping people choose a better story
Will Cady, interventional storyteller and cultural strategist, helps people choose a better story.
A story of becoming
Adapted from Which Way Is North
Sometimes the way to see who you are is to draw a line between two moments in your life and follow where it leads.
Delphi, the end of 2019
Will had spent years writing trend reports as a creative strategist at Reddit when a conference in Greece ended with a detour to Delphi, where oracles once sat over a crack in the earth and told kings what they saw.
In the bright light of Apollo's ruined temple, he recognized his own work. A strategist’s job, he would later write, is “a paved highway over the dusty trail of a much older vocation.”
Las Vegas, weeks later
During CES, in a casino suite, industry leaders from nearly every kind of brand sat down across from Will, one after another, and asked the oracle's question.
“What do you see?”
In the last session of the week, alone with a global brand's most powerful buyer, Will took a risk and told him the truth. “Something is coming. I don’t know what it is, but something is coming.” Where the horizon used to be, he saw a cliff, and one word kept rising.
“Heal.”
“We look at the future and we want to change it, but what about healing it?”
The buyer's face softened, and he nodded. Soon after, the world went into lockdown and an entire generation of strategists was activated to heal and to lead.
Perhaps you are one of them.
Those two rooms showed Will a vocation as old as culture: the oracle, the storyteller, the keeper and giver of visions.
What he saw in that suite became Which Way Is North, and the word he heard became HEAL MVMNT. On stage, in the room and on the page, Will helps people read the future in the room and see the part of it only they can make.
Who are we trying to be when we try to see the future?
- in·ter·ven·tion·al sto·ry·tell·ing /ˌin-tər-ˈven-shə-nəl ˈstȯr-ē-ˌtel-iŋ/ noun
- The practice of stepping into a story while it is still being decided, so that a person or organization can see the story they are telling themselves and choose a better one.
- The art of asking the question that changes the next chapter.
“A tarot reading is interventional storytelling in its simplest form.”
Every organization, and every leader, is deciding what its new power is for
Technology has given people enormous power, and the stories they tell decide what it gets used for. Will steps in at that moment of choice, bringing the judgment, meaning and imagination that keep a decision human. He calls it interventional storytelling.
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On stage
Keynotes and workshops on creativity, AI and the human role in what comes next, for conferences, leadership offsites and creative teams. Formats include fireside chats and live tarot sessions.
See the talks -
In the room
Private sessions for leaders and creatives at a turning point, using tarot and the Seven Directions to name the story already shaping a decision and find a better one.
Private sessions -
On the page
Which Way Is North, his handbook for human creativity, and his columns and articles on culture and technology. Next comes Tarot for Storytelling, a guided course built on the book.
See the book
The applied art of asking better questions, to open paths into better stories that lead to better decisions.
Will’s record across four careers
The MakerRegional Emmy-winning composer and authorA New England Emmy for composition and arrangement, and more than 3.5 million streams of his music. Author of Which Way Is North, an Inc. must-read.
The MarketerFounded Reddit's in-house creative agencyBuilt KarmaLab from the ground up, opened the Los Angeles office and helped take Reddit to IPO. Adweek Top 50 in Tech, Media & Marketing.
The MysticResident mystic for Reddit and Soho HouseWell over a thousand tarot readings, and the opening meditation for the World Mental Health Day Festival.
The MythographerColumnist where culture meets technologySince 2023 his SPIN column has tracked what happens when music, myth and archetype meet new technology. He also writes the Which Way Is North Substack.
For event producers and bookers
Speaking
Keynotes, workshops and live tarot sessions on creativity, AI, belonging and the stories that decide what technology is for. Audiences leave with a better question and a better story to act from.
Book Will to speakThe book
Which Way Is North
Written in 2022, on the threshold of the age of intelligent machines: a handbook for remembering what is human and finding original thinking. An Inc. Fall 2023 must-read and Next Big Idea Club pick.
See the book
The course
Tarot for Storytelling
A forthcoming course on reading the cards as structured questions, to find the adjacent story that leads somewhere better. Launching December 2026.
Explore the course
The vision Will champions
STEM for growth. HEAL for repair.
The four disciplines that keep progress human.
HealingEnvironmentsArtLanguage
Humanity has poured extraordinary ambition into technology, while its moral and emotional development has lagged behind. Will is championing a remedy: give Healing, Environments, Art and Language the same seriousness and investment that STEM receives. They are the four domains where meaning forms long before it becomes policy, product or platform.
It is the big idea he brings to stages, and the work of HEAL MVMNT, the movement he founded with Rachelle Cady to help organizations align what they build with what they value.
In his words
Speaking inquiries
Bring Will to your stage
Keynotes, workshops, fireside chats and live tarot sessions, in person or virtual. Tell us about your event, and Will’s team will follow up.