About Whole Story
From Many Perspectives to Whole Solutions
At Whole Story, we help create spaces, pathways, and capacities for people with diverse perspectives to listen, learn, and work together on complex challenges in ways that build trust and generate lasting solutions.
Whole Story Approach
We believe complex challenges can only be addressed when we see the full picture — the people, perspectives, histories, and systems that shape them. To move from surface-level fixes to lasting solutions, we need ways of working that embrace complexity rather than reducing it. Our approach is grounded in five guiding principles: Whole Self, Whole Perspective, Whole Circle, Whole Time, and Whole Care.
By showing up as our full selves, we honour lived experience and wisdom alongside professional roles. By welcoming many perspectives, we make space for many ways of knowing - whether they are scientific, community-rooted, cultural, or experiential. By seeing the circle, we recognize the interconnection of social, environmental, cultural, and economic systems. By remembering the past as well as imagining the future, we understand challenges and solutions as part of a larger story unfolding through time. And by caring for ourselves and each other, we create a culture of trust, respect, and reciprocity that makes honest collaboration possible.
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Practicing these principles allows us to notice the fuller story behind each challenge: the narratives that guide decision-making, whose voices and experiences are included or excluded, and how systems are interconnected. From this deeper awareness, we can begin to co-create solutions that are more meaningful, inclusive, and lasting.
Acknowledgments
The Whole Story approach draws on multiple ways of knowing, informed by systems thinking, community-based research, engagement, and facilitation practices, and inspired by the guidance of Indigenous knowledge systems where they are shared with us. We recognize that these are not our teachings to claim. Instead, we come with questions and invitations rather than answers, creating space for voices that hold deeper knowledge to be heard; whether they are already in the room or need to be sought from outside. Our role is to amplify, connect, and support. Our practices continue to evolve as we learn in relationship with partners, communities, and knowledge holders.
Collaboration Partner
Julia Coburn
(She/Her)
Facilitator and Collaboration Partner
Julia Coburn is a facilitator, systems thinker, and bridge-builder who supports communities and organizations in addressing complex challenges through collaboration and trust. With a Master’s in Urban and Environmental Planning (University of Waterloo) and over a decade of experience in facilitation, engagement, and research, Julia brings both professional expertise and a deeply relational approach to her work.
She is dedicated to bringing forward multiple perspectives and ways of knowing, acting as a facilitator across a variety of settings, from education systems, to national research networks, to community-led initiatives, to municipal sustainability and climate planning. Julia blends facilitation with systems thinking, complexity, and social entrepreneurship, focusing on how diverse voices can come together to solve problems more holistically - leading to healthier people, communities, and ecosystems.
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Julia has designed and led engagement processes across scales and contexts, including founding WorldVuze, a global platform connecting young people’s voices; co-founding Cross Community Connect in Tanzania to support community-driven solutions; facilitating learning and knowledge exchange through Community-Based Research Canada; and contributing to sustainability and planning initiatives with the City of Hamilton and the City of Waterloo. Across these roles, she has created spaces where diverse perspectives can meet, be heard, and shape new possibilities together.​