Founder and Executive Director
SUSAN C. STRONG, Ph.D., founded the Metaphor Project in 1997, to assist progressives and liberals in mainstreaming their messages by framing them as part of the ideal American story. She is also the author of Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear. She brings a broad range of experience to her work with the Metaphor Project–from academic to activist.
From 1980 to 1983. she served as a Visiting Lecturer at U.C. Berkeley’s Rhetoric Department and also at the Communications Department of St. Mary’s College, Moraga (1982-1985). She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from U.C. Berkeley. Her thesis examined some key examples of Enlightenment political rhetoric in narrative; her theoretical orientation at the time was based on The New Rhetoric. Since leaving the academic world, she has continued to do interdisciplinary research in the fields of American Studies, American political rhetoric, communications, metaphor and social change, framing and other topics relevant to the work of The Metaphor Project. Today The Metaphor Project focuses on practical application of the theoretical findings of modern cognitive science, particularly in the work of George Lakoff, Drew Westen, and Jonathan Haidt.
Beginning in 1985, Susan focused more of her day to day work on being an activist leader, non-profit strategist, staff writer, and columnist about issues of peace, environment, and ecological sustainability. She is a former Senior Research Associate at the Center for Economic Conversion (Mountain View) and a former Peace Action National Board member, representing California. She also served as National Peace Action Strategy Co-Chair and was a co-founder of the original Peace Action Peace Economy Campaign. She was a co-founder of The ‘Who’s Counting?’ Project as well.
Her writing has been published on OpEdNews, Alternet, Common Dreams, inThe Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Sacramento Bee, The Quaker Eco-Bulletin, The Michigan Citizen, Connections, and nationally syndicated by Pacific News Service andThe Progressive Media Project, among many other venues. She also blogs onThe Daily Kos, where her screen name is SusanCStrong. You can find her on Twitter, LinkedIn, Wiser Earth, and Facebook as well.
Metaphor Project Administrative Director
SILVIA SWIGERT, MS I/O Psychology, UCLA PhD program in Social Research Methods
Metaphor Project Board of Directors
Tom Atlee, President, The Co-Intelligence Institute
Edwin Bernbaum Ph.D., Fellow, The Sacred Mountains Program, The Mountain Institute; Author; Lecturer; Myth Expert
Christina Bertea, Sculptor and Green builder
Bridget Connelly Ph.D., Associate Professor Emerita, Dept. of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley
Lois Jones, former Green Business City Planner, City of Berkeley
Ken Lebensold Ph.D., President, The New Moral Vision
Robin Standish, NGO Development Advisor, Writer
Advisors
Don Goldmacher, Filmmaker, Heist: Who Stole the American Dream [and what we can do about it!]
Roger Pritchard, Management Guru
[Laurie Saunders, Lawyer, 1948 -2019]
Richard D. Strong, Editor,Photography Credit
Robert Mackinlay Photography, photograph of Susan C. Strong, Founder and Executive Director
Metaphor Project Network
The Metaphor Project Network is a nationwide and international group of subscribers to the MP E-list. As a ‘welcome letter’ is sent to new subscribers asking how they heard of the MP, we know who many of them are. They tell us they found out about the MP via other liberal and progressive list serves and that they regularly forward MP posts themselves.
Direct list members are for the most part high profile, ‘early adopter’ types of NGO staff, grass roots leaders and activists who are opinion leaders in their own circles. Beginning in 2004, there has also been strong new interest in the MP on the part of some Democratic blogs.
MP Blog Posts are sent directly to the Network. They include new MP suggestions for politically relevant frames, reframes or new MP resources, tools, or methods. Some MP posts invite Network members to co-create new language for current American issues, using MP resources and methods. Digests of the best work submitted are sent back to the MP list, making it at times a moderated online forum. News of the MP and announcements are also sent to the Network list.