The Story Powered Initiative – Case Study
A national anti-stigma storytelling platform developed at Concepcion Design for Penn State University
The Challenge
The initiative had outgrown its original identity. Operating under the name “Share Your Opioid Story” at shareyouropioidstory.com, the platform was focused on a single issue and difficult to scale. As the mission expanded to address stigma in all its forms, the team needed a new name, a new brand, a new domain, and a completely rebuilt digital experience.
On top of the brand evolution, the content management process was a bottleneck. Every story had to be manually built in the page builder — entering author name, location, quote, images, video, and tags one field at a time, then assembling the layout by hand. For a platform whose entire mission depends on publishing a steady stream of community stories, that wasn’t sustainable.
What I Built
I took creative and technical lead on the full rebrand and WordPress rebuild, new visual identity, branded video hero, animated elements, and a fully automated story submission pipeline. Visitors submit. The team approves. Stories publish instantly, perfectly formatted, every time. 155+ stories and counting.
The System
Gravity Forms feeds into ACF and Custom Post Types, which evaluate each submission and automatically select the right template based on image count and video from a library I designed. No manual layout. Ever.
Tools
WordPress, Avada, Gravity Forms, ACF, Custom Post Types, Yoast, Lottie, Adobe Creative Suite
Results
The system has been running reliably for years. The team approves or declines submissions and that’s it. 155+ stories have been published across topics ranging from substance use and mental health to racial justice and LGBTQ+ identity, reaching audiences nationwide through a Penn State University platform funded by the Independence Blue Cross Foundation.
This is a mission I’m genuinely proud to have supported. The work is still live, still running, and still helping people feel less alone.
Performance scores (Google PageSpeed Insights):