By Michael J. Jordan, Visiting Professor, Renmin University of China

We’re 29 enthusiastic Chinese youth, from across China – and one energetic American journalism teacher. For more of our thoughts, please visit the Lessons Learned section.

Meanwhile, our teacher, Michael J. Jordan, is a Beijing-based Communications Consultant, International Educator, Academic Advisor and Storytelling Specialist. Drawing upon the strategies and techniques learned from his two decades as an international journalist, Jordan teaches students how to overcome a core challenge of Strategic Communications: how to effectively reach and impact any smart, curious, global, but non-expert audience.

As a Foreign Correspondent, Jordan has reported from 30 countries – mostly in Eastern Europe and Southern Africa – for publications like Foreign Policy, Agence France-Presse, the Christian Science Monitor, the Global Post, Harvard’s Nieman Reports, and South Africa’s Mail & Guardian.

Before moving to China, Jordan lived in the tiny African kingdom of Lesotho, which suffers the world’s second-highest rate of HIV. He was the lone Western correspondent to cover Lesotho’s 2014 coup-attempt and months of instability afterward.

Jordan has taught and trained several thousand students and professionals on four continents: from New York to Hong Kong, from Prague to Lesotho. In 14 years of teaching courses and leading workshops, he has always developed and taught his own curriculum.

His International Reporting methodology was published by the training academy of the German media giant, Deutsche Welle. He’s also published a chapter on key storytelling differences between International Communications and International Journalism.

Today in China, Jordan teaches International Journalism and Communications to graduate students at two of Beijing’s finest schools – Renmin University and Beijing Foreign Studies University – and is a seven-time Visiting Scholar at Hong Kong Baptist University. In September 2017 he’ll return to the students of the Shanghai International Studies University, to teach his one-month Foreign Reporting from Shanghai intensive – which he modeled after THIS course.

Meanwhile, his Communications Consultancies have ranged from HIV orphans, maternal-health and gender-based violence in Africa, to labor issues, environmental protection and Food Waste in China. He helps organizations to dig deeper beneath “success stories,” to illuminate real on-the-ground impact.

This focus began in Africa, as he brought to life one NGO’s positive impact on HIV Orphans: he interviewed, photographed and profiled 24 beneficiaries for this digital e-book, then detailed his new storytelling method: The Fork in the Road.

In Beijing last year, in a Consultancy for the UN’s International Labor Organization, he trained Chinese ILO experts to raise awareness of worker’s rights through storytelling, like these two “impact stories” on the ILO website: Ergonomics in China: Tackling Workplace Stress and Healthcare Workers Care For Us, But Who’s Caring For Them?

Earlier this year, he completed his own Advocacy-through-Storytelling project – funded by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing – for Youth Environmental Education: The Chinese Champions of Environmental Protection. The China Daily featured his efforts, and he later published those stories on this website, which he created.

More recently, for the China office of IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, Jordan designed, researched, scripted and hosted a series of 10 instructional videos (access code: 12345). This teaches Storytelling-in-Communications to Chinese youth – as an advocacy tool to reduce Food Waste in China.

Meanwhile, Jordan is also an Education Counselor who has adapted his skills in International Storytelling, to mentor Chinese teens applying to top U.S. boarding-schools and American universities – guiding them to write their most persuasive Personal Essays. He has done this for a leading college-advising company in Shenzhen; as a Consultant for one of China’s finest International School networks: Dulwich College; and as a guest speaker for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

To contact Jordan, email him at mjjordan2016@yahoo.com.