About Dee Harris

Dee Harris believes creativity and curiosity unlock our capacity to navigate complexity, advocate for change, and imagine what's possible. She puts this philosophy into practice as a writer and strategist working across sectors — from global advocacy for open culture to behavioral health and education — with a conviction that an organization's story and its strategy are not separate disciplines. When they're aligned, storytelling becomes advocacy: a way to help communities make sense of complexity, move people to action, and navigate change.

As Director of Open Culture Storytelling at Creative Commons, she serves as Secretariat of a global coalition to advance equitable access to heritage in the public domain through international policy standards under UNESCO's auspices. In this role, she develops strategic campaigns, advocacy strategies, and story-driven messaging that translate legal, technical, and cultural complexity into advocacy communications that move policy and inspire action.

Previously, as Chief Strategic Engagement Officer and Chief Marketing Communications Officer for Family & Children's Services, one of Oklahoma's largest behavioral health centers, Harris built and led an integrated marketing, communications, legislative, and community engagement team supporting more than 70 programs. She launched a multimedia storytelling team that produced award-winning campaigns and founded the OK State of Mind podcast, amplifying local voices and reshaping public understanding of mental health.

As a former educator, Harris founded award-winning journalism and multimedia programs in Bixby Public Schools that empowered students through project-based learning and creative confidence. She developed a curriculum blending media literacy, narrative writing, and visual storytelling, earning state and local recognition for teaching excellence, and deliberately designed her classrooms as creative studios that gave students room to explore their curiosity and agency.

Harris writes and speaks globally across disciplines on access to cultural heritage, creative leadership, digital storytelling, and mental health advocacy, inspiring audiences from community gatherings to international conferences. She serves as a member and juror for the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts and has held national leadership roles with the Association for Women in Communications and the Journalism Education Association.

She writes The Curiosity Practice, a Substack exploring what happens to human creative capacity inside systems designed for efficiency and scale. Her writing sits at the intersection of technology, culture, and creativity and examines the conditions where wonder, imagination, discernment, connection, and adaptation actually develop, and what it takes to protect them in a world that increasingly optimizes them away.