Music Composition
Learning to hold structure, improvisation, tension, and emergence together.
Meet the Founder
T. Lee Morgan, Ph.D.
Scholar · Evaluator · Systems LeaderCreator of Renfaut™ and the R.I.S.E. Index™
T. Lee Morgan, Ph.D. is the founder of Renfaut™ and creator of the R.I.S.E. Index™, an integrated body of work that helps leaders and organizations cultivate the conditions for equitable systems transformation.
His work bridges scholarship and practice—rooted in critical inquiry, shaped by experience, and driven by a commitment to justice, possibility, and collective flourishing.
Founder’s Focus
The conditions we create become the futures we inhabit.— T. Lee Morgan
Scholarship & Positionality
Knowledge is never separate from who we are.
Morgan’s scholarship is shaped by his lived experience as a Black scholar, educator, researcher, clergyman, parent, and systems leader navigating institutions that are never neutral.
His work is grounded in the recognition that leadership and inquiry are inseparable from positionality. Race, power, history, privilege, and lived experience shape what people can see, what organizations choose to value, and what futures become possible.
Grounded in Ubuntu, Morgan understands leadership as an ethical responsibility to connect individual agency with collective flourishing. That perspective informs his commitment to centering marginalized voices, examining the structures beneath visible outcomes, and translating inquiry into action.
Rather than presenting expertise as certainty, he approaches scholarship through reflexivity and humility—acknowledging that transformation requires leaders to examine their own assumptions, remain open to correction, and continually deepen their capacity to act with integrity.
The Evolution of an Idea
Renfaut did not emerge overnight.
It developed across decades of creative practice, community leadership, scholarship, systems work, and evaluation.
Ministry & Community
Centering care, responsibility, belonging, and the relationship between individual and collective life.
K–12 Leadership
Leading large-scale change across schools, student-support systems, and community partnerships.
Higher Education
Researching leadership, equity, learning, organizational conditions, and institutional transformation.
Evaluation
Connecting data, lived experience, strategic learning, and decision-making across complex systems.
Renfaut™
Integrating theory and practice into a living praxis of knowing, being, and doing.
Why Renfaut Exists
Change can occur without transformation.
Organizations can adopt new language, revise policies, launch initiatives, and measure activity while continuing to preserve the conditions that generate inequity. Renfaut begins with the premise that transformation requires more than adjustment.
It asks leaders to confront reality, release the illusion of certainty, interrupt normalized harm, reconfigure power, and build the capacity for continual renewal.
Renfaut is grounded in Morgan’s commitment to use agency not merely to survive systems, but to understand and transform them. It reflects a belief that equity-centered leadership requires ways of knowing, being, and doing that are reflexive, relational, adaptive, and courageous.
Scholarship & Practice
Research designed to matter beyond publication.
Research and Evaluation
Morgan has led and contributed to mixed-method research, program evaluation, community-engaged inquiry, and multi-institution partnerships focused on leadership, equity, learning conditions, and systems change.
- Peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters
- National and international conference presentations
- Funded research and evaluation partnerships
- Executive and board-level decision support
Leadership and Capacity Building
His career has included district-level systems leadership, graduate and doctoral education, university-wide inclusive excellence strategy, and philanthropic learning and evaluation.
- Large-scale organizational transformation
- Leadership and professional learning design
- Doctoral research mentorship
- Equity-centered strategy and measurement
Education & Professional Identity
Grounded across disciplines.
Ph.D., Educational Leadership & Policy StudiesUniversity of Denver
M.Min., Organizational Leadership & EthicsCincinnati Christian University
B.A., Music CompositionUniversity of North Carolina at Greensboro
Morgan currently works at the intersection of strategic learning, evaluation, philanthropy, organizational development, and systems change. His professional path has included senior leadership in public education, faculty and institutional leadership in higher education, community-engaged scholarship, and philanthropic evaluation.
Across each context, he has translated complex evidence into practical strategy while centering the people most affected by organizational decisions.
Continue the Journey
See clearly. Imagine boldly. Act courageously.
Explore the scholarship behind Renfaut™, learn more about the R.I.S.E. Index™, or begin a conversation about leadership and organizational transformation.