About

Hi, I'm Stephen.

I've been making music since 1996, and somewhere along the way I discovered that the skills that make a hymn land on a Sunday morning are the same skills that make an organization's message land: knowing your audience, building toward something, leaving room to breathe.

So I've built a career with both. I'm Director of Research Communications at the Environmental Research & Education Foundation, Head of Marketing & Revenue Strategy at MyMatR, and Chief of Marketing at The Bizzarro Agency. Before that, I served as executive director of two professional associations and led marketing and communications for nonprofits and arts organizations. I also founded CommsOffice, a fractional communications office for people who inherited communications work without a team.

I'm comfortable with AI and use it regularly in my work for research synthesis, drafting, and workflow, always with human judgment in charge of the message.

On the music side, I'm the organist at Hayes Barton United Methodist Church in Raleigh. I compose and arrange sacred music for organ, piano, choir, and congregation, and during the pandemic I recorded Sacred Sounds, a concert mini-series inspired by The Joy of Music.

I write on Substack about work, communications, leadership, faith, and culture. And on Instagram, as @moreisaber, I explore maximalist menswear: statement jewelry, unconventional pieces, and a lot of joy.