ENGAGING. ENTERTAINING. ENERGIZING. JASON EFFORTLESSLY BLENDS STORY AND STRATEGY TO HELP YOU BUILD BETTER CONNECTIONS.
Jason Thompson spent over two decades as a writer, story artist, animation director, animator, and designer on productions for Disney, Warner Bros., CBC, Teletoon, National Geographic Kids, and Cartoon Network. As an artist and animator for Electronic Arts in England, he created some of the first designs for the Harry Potter game series before the movies had even been released. He spent 12 years as a Professor of Story at Sheridan College, training the next generation of storytellers in the craft.
Jason now runs a strategic storytelling consulting practice built on his big LITTLE moments™ framework, a practical approach to finding, creating, and sharing the small, purposeful moments that drive outsized results. He's used it to help a sport organization lift social media engagement by 75% with a single video series, help first-time founders land six-figure pitch wins, help a tech CEO turn one presentation into a $4 million partnership, and help a tourism brand raise customer satisfaction scores by double digits from one well-told idea.
He speaks regularly for Vistage executive groups, partners with organizations like YWCA Banff to build strategic storytelling capability across their teams, and has worked with leaders in real estate, energy, finance, sport, tourism, education, and the not-for-profit sector. Audiences consistently rate his sessions among the highest of any speaker on the agenda being practical, energetic, and immediately usable the next morning.
The Story of a Shirt
For 5 years every week 150 students gave me an hour of their time to attend ANIM 17198: STORY DEVELOPMENT and my accompanying lecture. I took that commitment seriously and each lecture was a purposeful mix of pedagogy, entertainment and a shirt. My shirts were a reflection of my personality and a deliberate antithesis to the cliched professorial corduroy jacket with suede elbow patches. I sourced them from thrift stores and high end men’s clothing shops, the more colourful the better.
On the final class one spring semester my students all showed up wearing coats. Inside. In April. "Interesting", I remember thinking. At the end of the lecture I thanked them for a great term and wished them well with their summer plans. In unison, they stood and removed their jackets revealing a colourful mix of shirts. Turns out they'd loved my shirts, creating stories about them and making playful bets on which would appear each week. It was a thing. Our thing. I was deeply touched.
Thanks to that class, every keynote, workshop, coaching and training I've done for the last twelve years has been paired with a shirt. And nary a session has gone by without at least one person commenting, further proving the power of an emotional connection.