Interview with Oscar-nominee and Warm Bodies producer, Cori Stern about her work with her Strongheart Foundation focusing on exceptional young people from challenged environments all over the world.

1. MOVIE PRODUCER CORI SHEPHERD
STERN IS SAVING THE WORLD
— ONE MIND AT A TIME.
By Corey Sienega
CORI SHEPHERD STERN IS THE EXECUTIVE PRO-
DUCER OF THE UPCOMING POST-APOCALYPTIC
ZOMBIE LOVE STORY WARM BODIES STARRING
NICHOLAS HOULT (X-Men: First Class and next
year’s Jack the Giant Killer). She discovered the
tale as a short story — then entitled “I Am a
Zombie Filled With Love,” later to be expanded by
author Isaac Marion into the novel “Warm Bod-
ies” — while late-night trolling on StumbleUpon.
Though the Seattle social worker-writer-musician
had his phone number listed on his website, no
one had ever used it before — certainly no one
from Hollywood. But Cori has a knack for discover-
ing people with something special to offer.
Philanthropy
GOOD
WHEN NOT TANGLING WITH
ZOMBIES OR VAMPIRES,
As the executive producer of the
upcoming film Warm Bodies, Cori Stern
helps Nicholas Hoult find a new lease
on death as a newly minted zombie.
Portrait by Jason Redmond
47geekexchange.com

2. other kids out of this very same
refugee camp that Lovetta had
been in,” Cori says. (Check it out at
akawelle.com/jewelry.php)
Cori and Strongheart aren’t
looking to turn the out aid workers
or doctors or lawyers. “I don’t
care what they want to be… I
just have faith that if they really
do their own healing work and I
can facilitate that work — both
on the emotional front, on the
educational front — then they’ll
do something great in the world
whatever it is.”
As evidence, Evelyn Apoko,
another Strongheart Fellow, was
abducted by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA) when she
was a little girl. Most of us only
recently began learning about
Kony and his Uganda-based ter-
rorist group through the viral video
and Kony 2012 movement. “Evelyn
was on her way to a safe house
to sleep and she didn’t make it in
time,” Cori says. “The LRA attacked
her village, she was taken out of
her home and marched through
the Sudan. Evelyn was with a
group of children — including a
5-year-old boy who was in her
arms — when the army started
bombing the area. All the kids
died except for Evelyn, who barely
survived herself.”
Wounded in the attack,
Evelyn has gone through
unimaginable pain and physical
trauma, including dozens of
reconstructive surgeries to repair
her shattered face.
“Our goal is to turn the Fellows
into influencers and advocates,
and they will do that naturally just
living their lives because they have
such unique histories,” Cori says.
“So Evelyn’s own history is that
there are very few children who
survived what she survived who
are out there speaking from the
point of view of what it’s like to be
an abducted child. She attended
the House Foreign Relations
subcommittee meeting on the
issue. She spoke privately with
members of the Senate. She’s also
spoken up against Rush Limbaugh
when he labeled Joseph Kony a
possible ‘righteous rebel’ rather
than a terrorist. And she’s been
a huge voice for the children just
based on her own experience.”
Rush retracted his advocacy of
Kony just days after Evelyn posted
a personal video address to him
on Vimeo (which you can see at
vimeo.com/30727317).
Strongheart is very focused on
the individual in this world where
we often talk in terms of the plight
of a tribe, a people, and a nation.
“I was always interested in how
you really solve a problem,” Cori
says. “If we can get healing going
on an individual level, then those
individuals will form groups, then
those groups will form communi-
ties, and then those groups will
form nations. That’s how you get
real change. I always thought
that’s what it would be like, even
when I was a kid. I was like, ‘If you
could change these people and
you could get them to change
other people... If you could reseed
the community with a different
kind of plant, then what would
grow?’”
So what advice can this zombie-
and-vampire-lover offer those
of us looking to do some good
without getting overwhelmed
before we get started? Cori keeps
it simple: “There are so many
problems in the world that can
be solved. So many. Just choose
something. Just start, do it. It’s
like cleaning your house. Just think
of the world as your house. You’re
not going to go, ‘Oh, it’s too messy.
I’m just going to burn it down and
walk away. Just pick up your shoes,
whatever.’”
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the Dalai Lama; she attends the
Africa Leadership Academy — the
top-level educational institution
for her age group in South Africa;
and she’s launching her own Afri-
can teen magazine.
Lovetta also designed the
Akawelle necklace — its name
coined by combining the terms
“a.k.a.” and “wel’le” (an African
word for love). Fashioned from the
brass shell cases strewn seemingly
everywhere in war-torn Liberia, the
necklaces have found their way to
the pages of fashion magazines
and are now worn by celebs includ-
ing Angelina Jolie and her children
(and, as of this publication, me,
my mother, some of each of our
friends, and maybe you after you
read this). “And the proceeds from
this necklace are what got all the
with world leaders and people of
influence,” Cori explains. The Fel-
lows also learn world history and
the history of their own tribes and
cultures. “When these kids come
to us, they’ve never heard of the
Holocaust or even the genocide
in Rwanda — they don’t know if
dinosaurs are real,” Cori says. “They
have so much wisdom but they
don’t have the things we learned
in K-12.”
As successful as the Strongheart
program is becoming — and as
driven as Cori is in achieving her
goal of helping those in need — her
path wasn’t always a clear one.
Having basically retired/burned out
from life as a TV executive at Fox
Family Channel (Fun fact: While
there, she created Breaker High,
giving an early spotlight to now-
superstar Ryan Gosling), Cori found
herself looking for a way to get in-
volved in something more person-
ally meaningful. “I thought I was
going to maybe write some press
releases for the U.N. or something
like that. But I ended up finding an
online listing that said something
like, ‘People dying. Help.’”
The man who placed this
mysterious missive was a lone
doctor in an African war zone
who had a group of some 1,000
orphans trapped behind rebel lines
without food or medicine and “was
just sending this plea out through
the Internet. So I answered it and
ended up helping him. That’s how
it all got started.”
It was on a trip to a refugee
camp in Ghana that Cori met
the then 12-year-old Lovetta
Conto, who would become the
first Strongheart Fellow and the
organization’s first great success
story. Cori remembers, “Lovetta
was the first kid whom I thought,
‘OK, what am I going to do? I can’t
leave this kid here.’ And I thought,
‘It’s time to put Strongheart
together.’” Lovetta is now 19 years
old, and her achievements are
already remarkable: She was the
top runner-up for the International
Children’s Peace Prize; she has met
A screenwriter herself, Stern is
also the mind behind the as-yet-
unproduced Vampire Truckers, the
tale of two young long-haul drivers
who find themselves in the middle
of a war between bloodthirsty
fiends and their more human-
assimilated brethren who choose
to live off bagged blood rather
than taking out the neighbors.
But the thing that makes Cori
really geek out isn’t zombies or
vampires; it’s that she has a mis-
sion to more or less save the world,
one exceptional young person at a
time. A day before she headed off
to Oxford, England, as an invited
guest of the Skoll World Forum On
Social Entrepreneurship, I sat down
with Cori to talk about her search
for the best and brightest in some
of the worlds most challenged
countries.
When Cori was 13, she read a se-
ries of articles about children who
were surviving in the midst of war.
And on that afternoon all those
years ago, she had the idea that
someone needed to bring these
children together and put them
with “the best, smartest people”
from every area of study — not
only because the kids needed help,
but because these young people
had something they could offer the
world. With the right guidance and
healing, Cori believed these kids
could actually help the rest of us.
And the dream never left her.
A long, winding road led Cori
and her partners, Kristi Manning
and Zoë Adams, to founding
Strongheart Fellowship, an Africa-
based international philanthropic
program that offers a healing place
for “exceptional young people
from extremely challenging circum-
stances.” Built with the help of
numerous volunteers, Strongheart
House is currently based in a
restored beachside bungalow in
Robertsport, Liberia. This is where
Cori and her partners introduce
their “fellows” to some of the
“best and smartest people in the
world” in the areas of interpersonal
neurobiology, cutting-edge trauma
healing techniques, nutrition, and
leadership.
The Strongheart Fellows are
recruited from around the world
using essentially a talent scout
program approach, seeking young
people between 14 and 25 who
show exceptional leadership
aptitude; resiliency, which is based
on their reaction and adaptation
to extreme circumstance; and
inadequate financial resources
and access to the highest quality
of education available in their
country. Strongheart is currently in
the process of moving to Austin,
Texas where Cori and her partners
believe they can create a wider
circle of opportunities for people to
help and participate.
Cori has an Ernest Hemingway
quote on the Strongheart site
homepage: “The world breaks
us all, and afterwards some are
stronger in the broken places.”
It’s a philosophy she believes in,
that from trauma can come hard-
won wisdom: “You speak from a
different place when you
go through that.”
There are currently 10 fellows liv-
ing in the Strongheart House, with
past participants having gone on to
bigger educational opportunities.
The curriculum consists of learning
tools to help them operate in the
world: academics, mindfulness
training, and such basics as dining
etiquette, “which is a big deal for a
kid who’s grown up never using a
knife or fork and suddenly is going
to be in situations where they are
03-04.
Fashioned
from brass
shell casings
found in war-
torn Liberia,
the leaf in
the Akawelle
necklace is,
in Lovetta’s
words, “to
show that
even after
something as
terrible as war,
new life can
begin.”
02
04
01
03
01.
Leading by
example:
after an
internship at
Seventeen
magazine,
Strongheart
Fellow Lovetta
Conto plans
to start a
magazine in
West Africa to
“show African
kids and Afri-
can issues.”
02.
Conto tells
her story to His
Holiness the
Dalai Lama.
05.
Strongheart
co-founder
Zoë Adams
and Fellow
Evelyn Apoko
embrace
Strongheart’s
mission arm-
in-arm.
NecklacephotobyJasonRedmond,allotherimagescourtesyofStrongheartFellowship.
JUNE 201248 49geekexchange.com