About No Lip Service
Narrative + storytelling for people + organizations in the business of change.
Communications for founders, innovators, scientists and change-makers.
No Lip Service uses a multidisciplinary approach to strategic storytelling, combining narrative theory, cognitive science, modeling + simulation and communications to tell stories that work.
Strategic storytelling emerged when digital media collapsed the divisions between communications and narrative — but storytelling techniques developed for fiction make real stories sound made-up. No Lip Service developed a scientific method for telling real stories about what we do, and provides narrative, storytelling and communications services that help people work together on collective solutions to shared problems.
No Lip Service runs these projects at the intersection of narrative and the storytelling boom:
Story-Modeling™: A multidisciplinary method for telling useful stories about the real world.
The Narrative Home: Bridging the study and production of narrative texts in the storytelling boom.
Tell Ethical Stories: Bridging the study and production of narrative texts, for ethical storytelling in the storytelling boom.
No Lip Service helps people work together on collective solutions to shared problems using narrative, storytelling and communications.
Fiona J. Ramsey
Narrative, Storytelling + Communications
Owner, No Lip Service LLC
Founder, Story-Modeling™
The Narrative Home
Tell Ethical Stories
Tell Useful Stories
Working Paper
The Invisible, Changing Role of Story in Web 2.0
Areas of Interest
Instrumentalized storytelling
Ethical storytelling
Literary Darwinism
Organizational storytelling
Narrative cognition
Fiona has worked at the intersection of narrative, storytelling and communications for 20 years, with startups, nonprofits and social change organizations using tech for social impact — including crowdfunding, microfinance, the sharing economy, the future of work, the future of care, and the future of organizing.
Fiona’s career in communications began as founding team member and Dir. of Public Relations at Kiva, seeing $100 million loaned in 4 years with zero marketing budget. She was one of the first communications practitioners working with personal storytelling in the digital story economy. Fiona has coached more than 100 founders, CEOs, staff spokespeople and organization members in storytelling, press interviews and public speaking, including group trainings. She has placed stories in top-tier outlets including NYT, WSJ, Glamour, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, San Francisco Chronicle, WIRED, FRONTLINE/World and has been published in top-tier publications as a ghostwriter. She offers PR crisis support selectively.
When digital media turned organizational communications toward storytelling — specifically instrumentalized personal storytelling — Fiona developed the theory and method of Story-Modeling™ to address practical and ethical issues of personal storytelling in the digital story economy. In 2025 Fiona launched The Narrative Home — bridging the study and production of stories in the storytelling boom — and Tell Ethical Stories for ethical impact storytelling at nonprofits and social change organizations.
Fiona has a B.A. (Literature, History) from the University of Melbourne, Australia, completed the Ohio State University Project Narrative Summer Institute of 2022, is a certified Narrative 4 Story Exchange facilitator, a member of the International Society for the Study of Narrative and has attended Narrative Matters since 2023. She presented Ethical Storytelling: How to Build a Strong Ethical Storytelling Practice at frankxMontgomery and “... And that’s why I decided to…”: Personal Stories as Scientific Models and Why It Matters at the Narrative Conference of the International Society for the Study of Narrative in 2026.
Fiona is from Melbourne, Australia and lives in Colorado, USA.
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Values
Every person has inherent value.
Your value isn’t proven. It’s not gained or built or earned. You have value in this world and you don’t need to prove it to me.
It matters how you treat people.
Results are never an excuse for how you get there.
Words matter.
They’re not “just words”. They are beliefs, communicated. Every word is an expression of what you believe. You matter. So your words do, too.
Words are not actions.
Do something.
Be of service.
Everything we do is in service of something. Be of service to things that matter.