Team > Joey Xanders…continued

From Previous Page: “Live a Great Story”

Joey Xanders lives by that motto. She is the co‑creator, founding Executive, and Artistic Director of The Moth. She worked at Actual Films, a prominent documentary company, and later produced a feature‑length documentary that inspired the Carol Emmott Fellowship for Women Leaders in Healthcare. Joey has managed musical artists and secured a publishing contract with Warner Chappell. She also spent years in the tech industry as a Culture Manager, Producer of events and videos, and Chief of Staff. She writes and tells stories—and can’t be tied down. Joey embraces risk, lives boldly, and loves people’s stories with all her heart

In 2021, Joey launched The Story Road, a service that produces legacy videos—because nothing excites her more than shaping someone’s story. While producing The Moth, she midwifed hundreds of stories. She worked with storytellers such as Mira Nair, George Plimpton, Tony Hendra, Ann Magnuson, Lisa Kron, Peter Hedges, Griffin Dunne, and Bingham Ray. She is now a story-development consultant and continues to write stories and produce films, books, and podcasts.

Born in Chicago and raised among the cornfields of Indiana, Joey knew early in life that she wanted to follow her own path. She spent two summers cutting lawns, saved $2,000, and took a one‑way flight to Belgium after high school. She traveled widely, through Europe, Israel, and Egypt, and applied to Wesleyan while visiting Jerusalem. After graduating from Wes, she moved to New York City and taught preschool on the Upper East Side—where she says she learned everything she needed to know about managing people—and volunteered at WOW Café Theater in the East Village.

After her mother’s death in 1991, she moved to California and worked as an administrator at a construction company, then at Brava! For Women in the Arts. Those experiences—preschool teaching, theater volunteering, and business administration—proved to be the perfect trifecta for launching The Moth in New York City, with an invitation from George Green. Joey co‑created and produced The Moth from 1997 until 2002, immersing herself in storytelling and developing a philosophy about the power of human connection. Following 9/11, she left The Moth in December 2001, met her (now ex) husband on a plane, moved back to California, and raised her son, Magnus, who is currently a Marine based in Japan.

Joey later worked at the acclaimed Actual Films and, in 2007, began teaching at Berkeley City College for ten years, where a student led her to Youth UpRising in East Oakland and to Clarence Thomas (CT Beats) in 2009. She treasured working with the talented young artists there. After her divorce, she took a corporate role at executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates and worked for Carol Emmott; when Carol’s cancer limited her time, Joey produced a documentary about her life. A screening of that film helped inspire the Carol Emmott Fellowship for Women Leaders in Healthcare, which now supports women leaders across the country.

During this period, Joey wrote and performed stories and produced a storytelling event at the Telluride Film Festival, which Salman Rushdie hosted, featuring Buck Henry, Teller, Jason Reitman, Tamara Jenkins, Joyce Maynard, and Michael Fitzgerald. In March 2016, she traveled to Cuba to explore the question “What Is Love in Cuba?” as part of a multimedia project.

CT Beats later invited her to manage his career, and Joey founded Queen JAX Music, a management company for urban music artists. While working with CT Beats and UMC, she helped secure a publishing deal with Warner Chappell.

Her interest in digital storytelling led her into tech. She taught a class called Movies to Multimedia, then spent a year at Leap Motion, a startup building hand- and position-tracking for AR/VR. After Leap Motion lost funding, she joined GitHub—producing the first Manager MeetUp and a series of videos supporting collaboration between Microsoft and Hubbers. She has also worked at Opendoor and Mynd and, more recently, served as an operations consultant for NCLT and BiggerPockets.

Through The Story Road, Joey invites you to explore her legacy portfolio. She values the stories she has featured in her films, books, and upcoming podcast project. < back to Team