Our Mission
Make Believe Works is a company dedicated to building emotional wellness through creativity, community, and play.
Individually, the sessions are designed to inspire introspection, build bonds between colleagues, and refuel creative confidence. But taken as a whole, Make Believe Works has an even deeper resonance. It helps build the emotional muscles to deal with uncertainty, push back on uniformity, and navigate unexpected change.
Our Team
Ben Swire
Ben is an award-winning designer and writer, and former Design Lead at the legendary innovation firm, IDEO. The thread that runs through his varied background in design thinking, philosophy, quantum theory, cinema, psychoanalytic theory, and literature is an exceptional curiosity about the hidden factors that influence our lives when we’re not looking.
While at IDEO Ben created Make Believe Time as a bi-weekly creative play date for the IDEO community. People from all levels in the studio came to the sessions to learn, create, play, laugh, and, most importantly, meaningfully connect with their colleagues and themselves. Participants walked away refreshed, energized, and ready to tackle challenges in new and creative ways. When interest spread beyond the walls of IDEO, Make Believe Works was born and now helps organizations ranging from Fortune 500 stalwarts to first-year start-ups to build the creative and emotional muscle memory that leads to a healthy, innovative, collaborative work culture.
He also wrote this snazzy book: mysteriesofsleep.com
CO-FOUNDER
Lara Storm
Lara spent the early part of her career living and working in Latin America, supporting economic development, in particular women entrepreneurs. Her studies at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs led her to a career in building non-profit initiatives focused on supporting women entrepreneurs and their families across the globe from Nicaragua to Kenya to Jordan and Bangladesh.
After years of listening to these women, a common theme began to resonate with her - beyond money and business skills, they yearned for a sense of belonging. It is this sense of safety and community that allows an individual to push the boundaries of convention, take risks, and soar to new heights.
Inspired to build the connections that help individuals and teams to reach new levels of creativity and growth, Lara co-founded Make Believe Works with her partner, Ben. In Make Believe Works, Lara seeks to contribute to a world where individuals, teams, and leaders deepen their self awareness; where empathy facilitates understanding across cultural, racial, and socioeconomic divides; and where creative, inclusive, and joyful communities support each other to realize their dreams.
CO- FOUNDER
