About

We help people find the words that matter

Lo/Be Story is a narrative design studio. We work with universities, organizations, and individuals who need a better way to tell their professional stories.

Our methodology — Narrative by Design — was built with the Dartmouth College Center for Career Design. It takes everything you could say about yourself and compresses it into something focused and true.

We believe the best stories aren't long. They're clear. And clarity starts with knowing which word — one word — sits at the center of what you do.

seth@lo-be-story.com
Process

Narrative Compression

Our process takes everything you could say and distills it down to the one thing that matters. Here's how it works:

1
Intake — We start with everything. Your full experience, your messy history, the paragraph version of who you are.
2
Categorize — We map your experiences across three dimensions: Values (what matters), Strengths (what you're wired for), and Skills (what you do).
3
Compress — Paragraph becomes sentence. Sentence becomes phrase. Phrase becomes one word. This is where the magic happens.
4
Rewrite — Using your one word as a lens, we rewrite your story — resume, pitch, bio — with focus and intention.
5
Reflect — Your one word isn't a permanent label. It's a tool for decision-making that evolves as you do.

The quiz you just experienced is a playful taste of this process. The real thing goes much deeper.

Story

Born at Dartmouth, built for everyone

Narrative by Design started as a workshop at Dartmouth's Center for Career Design. Students had rich, complex experiences but couldn't explain them clearly. Sound familiar?

The usual advice — write a better resume, polish your elevator pitch — wasn't cutting it. Students didn't need more words. They needed fewer. The right ones.

So we built a process that works in reverse. Instead of adding more, we compress. We use card sorts from Knowdell Career Values, CliftonStrengths, and Motivated Skills to map what matters. Then we keep compressing until one word comes out — a word that becomes a filter for every story you tell.

That process is now Lo/Be Story. The quiz you just took is the tiniest version of what we build for schools and individuals.

Let's talk about your story →
中文版 · 留学申请咨询 Welcome to Lo/Be Story

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6 choices. 60 seconds. 1 word that changes everything.

1 / 6
Values
BUILD
DISCOVER
2 / 6
Strengths
LEAD
SUPPORT
3 / 6
Skills
CREATE
ANALYZE
4 / 6
Values
DEPTH
BREADTH
5 / 6
Strengths
SPEAK
LISTEN
6 / 6
Skills
STRUCTURE
FLOW

You just experienced narrative compression — the core of our methodology.

Click any word to explore
About Process Team Services

Now discover the method behind the magic.

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About

Design Your Career Like a Story

Stop following someone else's script. Your experiences, skills, and aspirations aren't just a list of credentials — they're the material of a story that's yours to write. Lo/Be Story helps you shape that material into something clear, strategic, and real.

Our Narrative Design Framework pulls from psychology, design thinking, and reflective practice. We don't give career advice. We give you a process for figuring out what you actually want to say about yourself — and how to say it well.

We started Lo/Be Story because we kept seeing the same thing: talented people who couldn't explain what made them different. We built a methodology that fixes that — part research, part creative strategy, part honest conversation.

500+
Narratives Designed
95%
Graduate Admission Success
200+
Career Journeys Reimagined
15
Years in Design & Education
Our Story

We Started Lo/Be Story Because We Kept Seeing the Same Problem

Brilliant students who could ace any exam but couldn't answer a simple question: "What do you actually want?" They'd spent years meeting other people's expectations, and when those scripts ran out at graduation, they felt lost — not because they lacked talent, but because nobody had taught them how to tell their own story.

We noticed something else, too. The students who did well after college weren't always the ones with the best GPAs. They were the ones who could explain who they were and where they were going. They had a narrative. And yet no one was teaching students how to build one.

The Story Behind "Lo/Be"

Lo stands for Look — taking stock of where you are right now. Your experiences, your skills, your situation. It starts with seeing your starting point clearly, without judgment.

Be stands for Become — the person you're working toward through the choices you make. Not a fixed destination, but a direction you keep shaping.

And the slash? That's the work itself — the experimenting, reflecting, and rewriting that happens between where you are and where you're headed. It's where you stop living someone else's story and start writing your own.

Process

The Four Phases of Narrative Design

This isn't a one-size-fits-all program. It's a process that adapts to you — grounded in design thinking and reflective practice, and built to move you from "I don't know what to say" to "here's my story."

01
Discovery & Framing
We start with the big questions: Who am I? What do I care about? What story am I already living? Using assessments, narrative analysis, and energy mapping, we help you see the values and patterns you've been too close to notice.
02
Prototyping & Exploration
What futures excite you? What can you try before committing? We help you build Odyssey Plans — three different life trajectories — and design small experiments like informational interviews, micro-projects, and field observations to test them.
03
Sense-Making & Integration
What did you learn? What surprised you? We sit with you in the mess of it, help you find the patterns, and figure out what it all means for your next move.
04
Narrative Construction
How do your experiences connect into a bigger story? We help you build a Core Narrative Document, prepare stories for interviews and applications, and tie your past to a future that actually makes sense to you.
Services

What We Do

Career strategy, personal branding, application support, and workshops — all built around one idea: your story is your most valuable professional asset. Here's how we help you tell it.

Narrative Design Coaching
You have a lot of experiences. We help you turn them into a story that makes sense — one that shows who you are and where you're going. This is our core offering, and it's what everything else builds on.
Personal Branding & Profiles
Your LinkedIn, your portfolio, your bio — they should all sound like the same person. We help you figure out what that person sounds like, then make sure every platform reflects it.
Graduate & Career Applications
Statements of purpose, CVs, cover letters — we help you write the kind of application that makes a reader stop and pay attention. Not because it's flashy, but because it's specific and true.
Story-Driven Workshops
Group sessions for teams, classes, or cohorts. We teach people how to design, draft, and deliver their professional story — for interviews, networking, or any moment where it matters.

Who We Work With

Students & Graduates
You're preparing for internships, jobs, or grad school and need to figure out what makes you different. We help you find it and learn how to talk about it.

Career Changers
You're making a pivot and your old story doesn't fit anymore. We help you connect what you've done to what you want to do next — in a way that's honest and makes sense to others.

High-Achievers Seeking Direction
You've accomplished a lot, but you're not sure what it adds up to. We help you step back, see the through-line, and tell a story that actually represents what you care about.

Team

Lo/Be Story Team

Scholars, designers, and educators who've spent their careers helping people figure out what they want to say — and how to say it.

Seth Looper
Seth Looper
Founder
Seth is an educator and designer whose work sits at the intersection of architecture, technology, and how people grow. He started in architecture studios, where he learned that the best designs come from paying attention to what people actually need.
At Dartmouth's Center for Career Design, he leads the Career Design Lab — a space where students treat career exploration like a design project. His approach mixes design thinking, reflective practice, and hands-on learning to help students sketch out, test, and refine what they want their lives to look like.
He runs workshops like Mind Mapping for Career Exploration, Value-Based Career Design, and Pathway Simulations, and builds the digital tools that make them work. His goal is simple: get students to stop passively planning their careers and start actively building them.
Peter Krause
Peter Krause, Ph.D.
Senior Consultant
Peter has spent his career teaching, advising, and managing programs for graduate students — helping them at every stage from research to professional development to figuring out what comes after. He holds a Ph.D. from Fordham, an M.A. from NYU, and a B.A. from Goucher College.
From Fordham to Dartmouth to Princeton's GradFUTURES, he's been focused on the same thing: helping students think clearly about academic job markets, get serious about networking, and find unexpected ways to use their graduate training. At Princeton, he manages six experiential fellowship programs as Assistant Director of Graduate Experiential Programs.
Before Princeton, he advised students at Dartmouth's Center for Professional Development, directed writing centers at Fordham, and taught composition. He operates on a simple belief: most people will say yes to a cold email from a curious student.
Shahab Albahar
Shahab Albahar, Ph.D.
Senior Consultant
Shahab's work covers urban policy, environmental design, ecological restoration, and social advocacy. He holds a Ph.D. in City/Urban, Community and Regional Planning from the University of Virginia, an M.L.A. from Harvard, and dual B.Arch/B.F.A. degrees from RISD.
His doctoral research at UVA used queer ethnography to study how urban spaces are built, negotiated, and reclaimed — with a focus on communities that urban studies tends to overlook.
Before his doctorate, Shahab taught architectural design and theory at Kuwait University, co-founded Parallel Studio — a practice with projects across Kuwait and Saudi Arabia — and ran workshops in 3D modeling and visual representation. He sees design as a tool for changing systems, not just buildings.
Brandon Green
Brandon Green, Ph.D.
Senior Consultant
Brandon has spent nearly eight years in higher education as a scholar, instructor, and mentor. As a Career Coach at Dartmouth, he helps students explore what's out there, figure out what they're good at, and start building professional experiences that actually mean something to them.
He thinks career development is a liberal arts problem — it takes reflection, storytelling, and a willingness to try things. He's volunteered as a mentor and writing consultant for McNair Scholars, working with first-generation and underrepresented students on graduate research, writing, and personal statements.
Brandon's job, the way he sees it, is helping students go from "What should I do?" to "Here's what I'm doing and why." He wants them to see their career as a story they're writing, not a path they're following.
Contact

Ready to Start?

Book a free consultation. We'll talk about where you are, where you want to go, and how your story can get you there.

Get a Free Consultation

seth@lo-be-story.com


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