Storyteller.
Strategist.
Guide.
Giles Morris
Everything I do professionally is rooted in aligning my search for connection and meaning in my personal life to finding purpose in my work life. That’s true for many mission-driven leaders. At Foxhall Strategies, we believe that clarifying these links and activating their connections is essential to achieving success. If everyone can see their own success story in the day-to-day work, your team can achieve great things. Here’s a little bit about my story.
Storyteller
I have spent the past two decades as an editor, journalist, and writer producing print, online, and radio content and chronicling how larger economic and cultural forces affect the lives of individuals and families in communities from urban Chicago to rural South.
I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2011 to become the editor-in-chief of C-VILLE Weekly, where I helped the longstanding free weekly newspaper develop its first digital strategy. I learned firsthand how powerful media can be and how fragile media ecosystems are, in addition to making a lot of newspapers and special sections. See my most recent work.
Strategist
As Vice President of Marketing & Communications at James Madison’s Montpelier, it was my job to make sure all of our internal and external communications supported the mission of the organization. When we launched the award-winning groundbreaking exhibition “A Mere Distinction of Colour,” the job meant creating an aligned strategy for owned content, social media, email, and local and national PR that could deal with the weight and complexity of the narratives.
Challenges like that teach you who you are, and I realized that one of my primary gifts is strategy. But I also learned something even more important working with the descendants of enslaved ancestors whose stories formed the emotional core of our work. I’ve come to realize that connection to community is what we are all after in our work, and yet we rarely prioritize connection when we develop our processes and strategies or evaluate our success. At Foxhall, we work to align mission, strategy, and connection.
Guide
Since most of us spend most of our time at work, we gravitate to work that is meaningful. But it’s a two-edged sword. If all of our meaning comes from our work and we fail, how do we pick ourselves back up? How do we have the courage to take the necessary risks to do something extraordinary when we are responsible for making a living?
That’s why I orient my work as a guide. Just like a guide, I join your team at a time when you need help going somewhere. And just like a guide, I make your problems and your mission my problems and my mission while we are together. I share my skills and experience as a leader, media professional, and strategist when and how you need them to help you get where you are trying to go and to do it yourself when I am not there.
