A minimalist abstract digital illustration with a large beige background and an orange irregular shape on the right side.

A woman with curly brown hair wearing a rust-colored sleeveless top and matching pants sits on a wooden stool against a beige background, looking confidently at the camera.

An orange squiggle thread on a transparent background.

Meaning Is My Medium

Hi, I'm Laura Nespoli — strategic storytelling advisor, keynote speaker, and author of Threads of Me and You: Unravel Your Limits and Weave Growth From Within. For 15+ years, I've helped Fortune 500 brands make their story matter. Then I turned the same process on my own life, and found the limits I'd been living inside.

BACKGROUND

Story is a structure that delivers meaning and inspires action. That's true for a brand. It's just as true for a life.

My work has spanned consulting sales and marketing teams, research and insights, creative strategy and planning, brand and purpose development, and product messaging and storytelling. Across Fortune 500s, and non-profits, local to global in scale. In every capacity, I have always been drawn to how to make information matter to a stakeholder or audience. How can I bring them through a journey that helps them see themselves in the content and wins their engagement, their mindset shift or a new behavior adoption?

For a long time, I had a feeling I couldn't name. Not restlessness — I wasn't trying to leave my life. But I felt a sense that there was more of me still waiting to be known. I've come to call it wonderlust: the curiosity so strong, you’re willing to look inward, and ask what's beyond the limits you've accepted as fixed.

After experiencing transformational change and growth in my personal life, I realized how powerful my story was for creating movement in my own life—for unraveling limits that had contained me and helping me grow into the woman I wanted to be. I started studying the science of story, and how we can use it as a driver for personal growth and development; for more meaningful connection with ourselves, our families and communities, and the world around us.

That study became Threads of Me and You — part memoir, part workbook — and the framework I now use with readers, audiences, and clients alike.

THE OWN YOUR STORY METHOD

Follow the threads. Unravel their meaning. Weave your story.

Three steps. The same three, whether we're building a brand's story or rebuilding your own.

Follow the threads.

Look at the most critical fibers in your story. Find where they create the most consistent patterns. Follow them — from what got you here, and toward what's pulling you somewhere new.

Unravel their meaning.

Look for where threads converge, diverge, tangle. In a business story, that's where the most interesting tension lives. In a personal one, that's where the growth is.

Weave your story.

Decide, with intention, what stays and what goes — and what pattern defines your growth from here. The same process that builds a brand's story can rebuild your own path forward.

I use this with founders and Fortune 500 teams. I used it on myself. It's the spine of the book, the app, and every keynote I give.

This is my purpose story

Here's what "weave your story" looks like when the story belongs to a business. It's one of the simple story structures I use to help brands, founders and leaders communicate their story in a succinct and inspiring way.

Media and Features

Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center

SESSION
A resonant go-to-market story isn't the one with the most information. It's the one an audience can see themselves inside. Laura's session for the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center on how to craft a winning go-to-market story.

Watch the session
The Unified Brand Podcast

PODCAST
The thing a founder is most reluctant to name is usually what makes the brand human. Laura on how personal change shapes business storytelling, and how brands build narratives that land on a human level.

Listen Here
Count Me In

PODCAST

What does it look like to lead yourself first? Laura talks career pivots, pulling on life's loose threads, and wonderlust — her own term for the pull to look inward — as the throughline between personal and professional growth.

Watch the episode
Thriving in the Messy Middle

PODCAST

Storytelling isn't just a business tool — it's how we redefine our own narrative. Laura talks with Amy P. Wilkins about following the thread of curiosity through life's messy middle, and the realization that reframed everything: "I never felt like I was a protagonist in my own life."

Listen to the episode
Leading Beyond Limits

PODCAST
Agency isn't something you're given. It's something you practice. Laura on creativity, finding your own story, and how that connection to self builds community.

Listen Here
Raising Hope

PODCAST

Laura Nespoli speaks about why a life that feels off doesn't need rebuilding — it needs reweaving, and what that reveals about real personal and business growth.

Listen to the episode
Marketer of the Day

PODCAST
Story isn't decoration on the strategy. It's the structure underneath it. Laura joins Robert Plank on the science behind storytelling and how to use it to make an impact with an audience.

Watch the Episode
Engaging Personalities

PODCAST
Vulnerability isn't a weakness — it's a trust-building strategy. Strategic storyteller and Meshin Movement founder Laura Nespoli breaks down the psychology of the vulnerability loop, and why the stories we're afraid to tell are the ones that drive stronger communication, better ideas, and real growth — personal and business alike.

Watch the pod
Power Speaking Live

PODCAST
Storytelling isn't a soft skill. It's the one that makes every other skill land. Laura on the episode Make Storytelling Your Power Skill, covering story for brand, personal, and community impact.

Listen to the Episode
What The Frac

PODCAST
AI can generate a message. It can't decide what you mean. Laura joins Nicole Zeno and Tamara Laine on strategic storytelling for startups and where AI actually fits in marketing.

Watch the podcast
Inside Personal Growth

PODCAST
The story you tell about your own life is the one you end up living inside. Laura on how narrative drives growth, and why the line between personal and professional is thinner than most people assume.

Watch the episode
She, Illuminated

PODCAST
Laura discusses how storytelling can help improve mindset, be used as a vehicle for resilience and help create meaningful and purpose driven life.

Listen here
Nasdaq

ARTICLE
What happens when the definition of success you inherited stops fitting? Nasdaq profiles Laura on building Meshin Movement, a story and strategy consultancy with social impact built into it.

Read the Full Article
Business Storytelling Made Easy

PODCAST

Laura speaks with Kelly D. Parker on this episode titled, The Power of Connection: How Storytelling Enhances Leadership, Growth, and Expansion.

Watch the episode
The Business Journals

ARTICLE
Laura shares perspective from her story on following purpose to find your way forward on your professional journey.

Read the full article
Collabs.io Mag

ARTICLE
Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in personal and business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Laura Nespoli, founder of Meshin Movement, located in Rochester, NY, USA.

Read the full article
The New School

ARTICLE
Connecting the many moving parts and pieces that fit within “my work” is a belief that stories have the power to change minds and behaviors for the greater good.

Read the full article
Canvas Rebel

ARTICLE
Laura shares from her story and offers perspective on knowing when to pivot and finding resilience in her business journey.

Read the full article
Motherhood Advantage

PODCAST

Motherhood as leadership, not just caregiving. Laura talks with Dr. Laura Marie Rivera about breaking generational patterns, becoming the protagonist of your own story, and why real transformation starts with one small choice at a time.

Click Here
Nasdaq

ARTICLE
Identity isn't separate from how you build a business. It shapes what you notice. Laura writes for Nasdaq on how her LGBTQ+ identity informs her perspective as a business owner.

Read the full article
Sweet but Fearless

PODCAST

Your story isn't just something that happened to you — it's something you can reclaim. Laura talks with Mary Sullivan about how personal narrative fuels growth, deepens self-awareness, and strengthens the relationships that matter most.

Listen to the episode
9 to 5 Mom with a Pod

PODCAST

The patterns we inherit as children don't have to write the rest of our story. Laura talks with Francheska Stone about recognizing childhood influences, moving through fear, and reweaving those threads with greater awareness — for growth that's both more authentic and more self-directed.

Click Here

In the summer of 2018, I had a vision that woke me from a sound sleep. I saw a connecting and contemplative meal experience. People joining each other around a table for more than a meal—they were united by a narrative of connection. The meal wove an experience that told the story of and raised money for a non-profit in need.

I started Meshin Movement to pursue this social entrepreneurial idea, while continuing to deliver my brand and product storytelling services. Today, I host Meshin Meals as an experiential way to bring non-profits’ missions to life and give friends and communities a way to share a new level of meaning and connection around a table.

Learn More About Meshin Meals

Proud supporter & sponsor

Laura pledges 10% of Meshin profits to the world’s most effective charities and is a proud supporter of many organizations in the Greater Rochester, NY community and globally.