About Story Engine | AI Storytelling for Nonprofits

Great stories were slipping away. So we built a way to keep them.

Yoonji Jung and Cory Shoemaker, co-founders of Story Engine

Yoonji and Cory spent years helping nonprofits tell their stories at Good Creatives, and watched great ones slip away because no one had time to collect them. Story Engine is how they’re making sure every organization can easily capture and share its impact.

It started with the stories nobody had time to collect

Yoonji founded the Columbus, Indiana-based agency Good Creatives in 2015 to help mission-driven organizations visualize and amplify their impact. Cory joined as a content strategist in 2023 and later became a partner. Together, they’ve built brands, marketing, and campaigns for nonprofits, foundations, funders, and community groups.

In every case, they ran into the same problem: programs would change lives, but the stories would stay in a staff member’s head or get buried in data. The teams wanted to share those stories. They just didn’t have time or resources to do it.

“We felt frustrated watching great work go unshared because of budget and time. Story Engine was our answer.”

Yoonji Jung, Co-Founder

Yoonji Jung presenting Story Engine on stage at Columbus Design Collective’s Design Conversations, beside a screen that reads “Story Engine collects, creates, and organizes your impact stories in one place.”

Yoonji presents Story Engine at Columbus Design Collective’s Design Conversations, “Designing Understanding: How Storytelling Turns Impact Into Action,” as Story Engine went public in August 2026.

Tested in the field before it launched

Yoonji and Cory first piloted Story Engine with Black History Month Columbus in 2026. They collected stories at community events, from local historians like Paulette Roberts, and used them to help honor and preserve Columbus’ own Black history (even collecting stories for special moments like the re-discovery of the Goins Hotel, a local site where Black travelers could safely rest and eat during the Jim Crow era).

Snapshot of the article “The Goins Hotel: A Hidden History of Black Success and Resilience in Columbus, Indiana” on the Black History Month Columbus website: two paragraphs about the evening talk, then photos of a presenter pointing to a drawing of the Goins Hotel and a speaker at a podium sharing a slide about Little Harlem with the audience.

Read the full article

Made with Story Engine: an article on the Goins Hotel talk, from interviews collected during the pilot.

Along the way, they kept building. Ellie, Story Engine’s AI interviewer, meets storytellers where they are through video, phone, and chat. Story Engine tracks consent, giving storytellers control over what a team can use in communications, and lets them change their mind at any time. From one interview, Story Engine can draft dozens of posts, emails, and more in the team’s voice, using quotes pulled straight from the conversation. Every draft is checked against an Ethical Storytelling Framework, and every story is saved in one searchable library, ready for the next report, grant, or appeal.

In August 2026, Story Engine went public – becoming a tool that anyone can use to collect, create, and organize quality story-based content.

2015Yoonji founds Good Creatives

2023Cory joins Good Creatives

2026First pilot with Black History Month Columbus

Aug 2026Story Engine opens to everyone

“Every organization should be telling stories. It can be such a huge difference-maker for building trust and relationships.”

Cory Shoemaker, Co-Founder and Developer

Yoonji Jung

Co-Founder

Before she was a founder, Yoonji Jung was a student in Istanbul, having immigrated from South Korea with her family at age ten. An international school opened her eyes to the value of engaging with different cultures, and a high school art teacher, seeing her creative potential, opened the door to design. Even as she took a more traditional path, earning her business degree at METU – one of Turkey’s top universities – and building a career in corporate communications, Yoonji continued to nurture her creative skills. Teaching herself design in her spare time, she would lay the groundwork for a career shaped by purpose over profit, and the difference she wanted to make in her community – and beyond.

In 2015, she founded Good Creatives. It started as a solo design practice, built on pro bono work for local nonprofits, including a rebrand of the Council for Youth Development (which is still one of her favorite projects). Today, the agency is an established strategic partner to changemaking organizations. From mental health and public wellness campaigns to global humanitarian assistance and the arts, Yoonji has partnered with teams of every size and mission to support change that lasts.

Yoonji has been recognized by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (Creatives on Creatives), Columbus Living Magazine (“On Becoming Yoonji Jung”), and The Republic (Women to Watch). In her spare time, she enjoys making bead art and watercolor paintings, and playing cooperative board games with friends. She lives in Columbus with her husband, Emrah, and their young daughter, Reyhan, who is trilingual, imaginative, and enjoys making things with her hands, just like her mom!

Cory Shoemaker

Co-Founder and Developer

Before he was a founder, Cory Shoemaker was a storyteller with an entrepreneur’s itch. He started writing creatively as soon as he could use a pencil, and as a teenager he built his first successful venture, a digital rock magazine called Mob Sounds. At Rollins College – where he studied philosophy, creative writing, and critical media – he wrote stories and screenplays that centered queer characters and he came to see storytelling as a tool for social change. A certification in Human-Centered Design Thinking and Leadership through AdventHealth (formerly Florida Hospital) introduced him to the concept of user experience design, and taught him how intentionally designing systems that start with empathy often create the most meaningful change.

After leaving college, Cory put his skills to work as a copywriter, primarily for nonprofits. That work led him to Good Creatives in 2023, where his first project with Yoonji was Black History Month Columbus. Today, he co-leads strategy and communications as a partner at Good Creatives. As Story Engine’s Co-Founder and Developer, he leads every strategy, build, and safeguard that ensures quality content and keeps storytellers in control of their own words.

Cory lives in St. Augustine, Florida, with his wife, Amethyst, and their pups, Dolly (named for both the witty fictional matchmaker and Dolly Parton) and Rosie. Off the clock, you’ll find him reading about Zen philosophy, falling asleep to accidental ASMR YouTube videos, or losing at chess.

Help your team keep its best stories.

Story Engine collects stories by phone, text, or video, turns them into quality content your team can share, and keeps everything at your fingertips in one searchable library. Your first story collection is free.