Prosperity Now partnered with Collective Change Lab to use systems storytelling as a tool for cross-sector collaboration for financial security. The initiative aimed to move beyond traditional data and expert-driven narratives by humanizing policy conversations and surfacing the often-unspoken narrative barriers that shape economic resilience work—particularly ideas around deservedness, productivity, and prosperity.

Storytelling circles were convened during Prosperity Now’s October 2025 conference in Washington, DC, bringing together policymakers, advocates, and practitioners from across the country. The circles created space for participants to connect personal experience with broader economic systems, enabling new forms of empathy, shared understanding, and strategic reflection. A key insight from this work was that storytelling can help systems actors slow down, reckon with their own positioning, and build relational coherence across sectors that are often siloed by role or discipline.