PMC President & CEO Margot Fahnestock Joins Global Expert Panel on Storytelling for Behavior Change

The SIE (Social Impact Entertainment) Society invited PMC President and CEO Margot Fahnestock to join a panel of global leaders working at the intersection of entertainment, research, and social impact for Writing Stories for Behavior Change: From Insight to Impact — a one-hour expert conversation on how storytelling can be intentionally designed to drive social and behavior change.

The panel brought together practitioners from across the entertainment-education and global development fields. Alongside Margot, panelists included leaders from RAES, a Senegal-based organization using media and digital tools for social change across West Africa, and Girl Effect, a global creative nonprofit that builds youth brands and mobile platforms to shift norms for girls, among other practitioners working on narrative-driven approaches to health, gender, and development challenges. The session was moderated by Sarah Osman, an advisor in the field, and the SIE Society, which convenes the field’s leading thinkers on how entertainment can serve as a force for social good.

Drawing on PMC’s nearly three decades of experience and her own leadership in global women’s health, philanthropy, and narrative strategy, Margot offered a clear look at how evidence-based storytelling works in practice: integrating behavioral insights into scripts from the earliest stages of development, fostering collaboration between research and creative teams, and measuring both narrative change and real-world impact. The conversation moved between high-level strategy and practical guidance — the kind of session that speaks equally to funders evaluating where to invest, practitioners designing their next project, and creators looking for a rigorous partner.

The discussion reinforced a central insight: the organizations doing the strongest work in entertainment for social change are the ones that bridge creative storytelling with rigorous research and deep understanding of the communities they serve. Each panelist brought a different model — from digital youth platforms to West African media campaigns to PMC’s evidence-based methodology embedded in prime-time entertainment. What they shared was a commitment to measurable impact and a recognition that the field is stronger when its leading practitioners are in conversation with each other.

Watch the Recording: siesociety.org/events/writing-stories-for-behaviour-change-from-insight-to-impact/