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 — knowing your audience, building toward something, leaving room to breathe — are the same skills that make an organization's message land.

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.