An Eternal Archetype: Griot Global

I often joke that I'm a creative forced to be a technologist.

I spend a fair amount of my professional life understanding and applying the latest technology to solve communication problems. But before I ever wrote a strategy, tested a new technology, or tried to measure performance, I was just a kid who loved a good story. Stories were my sanctuary in a world that could be loud, fast, and unforgiving. I found comfort in the idea that stories could make sense of chaos — that they could shape what people believed, how they behaved, and what they thought was possible.

And somewhere along my journey through life, I realized something simple: every great leap forward in human history began with a story.

The World We Inherited

We like to pretend we’re rational creatures. We measure, we quantify, we optimize. We build machines to tell us what to feel, and algorithms that decide what we see.

But there’s nothing to see without the human behind the content. The myths, the music, the art, the ideas, and the marketing that shape our perceptions are human creations. Sure, generative AI can pump out more content in minutes than any human being could in a month - but only because generative AI relies on a corpus of content created by people over generations. 

All of the data and the algorithms are meaningless without people to give them meaning. That meaning comes from the stories and the reality is we never stopped telling stories. We just built better amplifiers.

Some amplifiers allow a few to drown out the stories of others. Some stories were lost in the noise. But the urge to connect — to make someone understand, to move someone to act — that never went away.

That realization was the catalyst for Griot Global.

Why Griot Global Exists

Marketing is just storytelling that gets someone to act. Usually, the “act” in question is “buy this thing.” But that need not always be the end goal for a marketing campaign. Advocates market for change, non-profits market to address a social problem, governments market to promote social cohesion. Marketing exists beyond the commercial industry, we just tend to call it by a different name.

I started Griot Global because I believe everyone deserves the kind of clarity, creativity, and care that good marketing can bring — not just billion-dollar brands.

Public servants. Volunteers. Nonprofits. Neighborhood coalitions. Individuals trying to make a social impact.

These are the people Griot Global serves — the people who serve others.

My vision is that Griot Global helps public servants connect with the communities, constituents, and audiences they aim to help. Because good intentions aren’t enough; to create impact, you have to be heard and understood.

Marketing isn’t just a tool to sell stuff — it’s a necessary function to advance society

The Modern Day Griot

Across time and geography, every culture has had its storytellers, those special individuals that carried the dreams of the people forward.

In West Africa, the French called them Griots — the oral historians, poets, and musicians who preserved truth through rhythm and story. In medieval Europe, Troubadours sang of love and loss to help societies make sense of emotion. In Jewish tradition, the Maggidim taught moral lessons through parables. Among the Elwha S’Klallam Tribe, the “Sacred Breaths” pass ancestral stories from one generation to the next.

The poet. The propagandist. The advocate. The marketer.

Different names, same archetype — the storyteller who shapes how a culture sees itself.

Griot Global will stand in that lineage. Our tools are new, but the purpose is ancient.

And I believe the Griot and the technologist need not be at odds. A story that no one hears does nothing; a sound without meaning is just noise.

At Griot Global, the storyteller and the technologist aren’t rivals — they’re partners.Two sides of the same coin, both essential to progress.

The storyteller gives the technology purpose.

The technology gives the storyteller reach.

When those forces work together, we don’t just communicate — we connect and we change.

I believe that even in an age of data and automation, a good story still has the power to change everything.

One of Us

Not everyone can be a Griot — but those who can change the world.

They use every tool — digital or otherwise — to remind us of lessons from the past and to help us imagine a better future.

That’s what I want to build.

That’s what Griot Global is for.

If you’ve ever believed a good story can make the world a little bit better — welcome. You’re already one of us.