Talk:Nate Morris

Well-sourced draft: Rewrite
Hello editors! I'm Matt, here as a representative of Nate Morris to offer suggestions for improving the current entry. While I'm new here and still learning, the site's guidelines for editors like me who have a conflict of interest are clear. I will not edit the article directly myself, but will instead make suggestions here on the article's Talk page for discussion and collaboration with reviewing editors. I welcome feedback from the community on best practices for similar entries and will request that acceptable edits be made on my behalf.

In reviewing the current article and some of Wikipedia's guidelines for biographies and acceptable sourcing, it looks to me like the current entry has a lot of room for improvement. Rather than provide a long, cumbersome list of edits for the community to consider, I have attempted to rewrite the article in its entirety, working to represent claims neutrally and maintain only information that I believe to be significant and verified by Wikipedia-appropriate references (provided). Please find my proposed draft here, immediately following my signature below.

Are there any interested editors willing to review my work and place some version of this improved draft for the article? I welcome feedback and am happy to collaborate further with the goal of replacing the existing entry for Nate Morris with this better-sourced one. Thank you in advance for your review and any consideration. MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 16:00, 12 January 2021 (UTC)


 * DRAFT: REWRITE
 * Nate Morris


 * Nate Morris is an American entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of Rubicon Technologies and founder of Morris Industries.


 * Early life and education
 * From Lexington originally, Morris grew up in Louisville, Kentucky with his single mother, Miranda Morris, and maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Lewis Sexton, was a former president of the Ford plant United Auto Workers union in Louisville. While attending Eastern High School, Morris reportedly developed political aspirations after multiple spinal fractures derailed his hopes of a football career in the fall of 1996.  At 17, Morris was high school senior class president, captain of the debate team, and one of 96 high school students nationwide selected to represent their states for Boys Nation that year, where he met President Bill Clinton at the time.  Receiving an academic scholarship in 1999, Morris went to George Washington University in Washington, D.C.,  where he studied international affairs and political science.  After graduating in 2003, he spent time in China teaching business management and working for Kentucky's Cabinet for Economic Development before pursuing graduate studies at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.


 * Early career
 * Morris worked in several government offices including the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the White House. He has worked in internships and fundraising roles, and as a freelance campaign consultant for several Republicans, including President George W. Bush, Congresswoman Anne Northup, Senate Majority Whip (at the time) Mitch McConnell, Labor Secretary (at the time) Elaine Chao (McConnell's wife), and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Morris befriended U.S. Senator Rand Paul in 2013 when he was among 50 individuals who joined Paul in a tour of Israel.


 * Business
 * Morris was included in Fortune list of "40 under 40" in 2014. Morris started Rubicon Technologies, a software company focused on waste and recycling, after collaborating with a high school friend, Marc Spiegel. He used personal credit cards to fund an early website and legal work, founding the company in 2008. Key investors that Morris engaged for Rubicon early on included John Ashcroft, the former U.S. Attorney General in the George W. Bush administration, and others. Rubicon seeks to improve inefficiencies in the waste management industry by analyzing data associated with large volumes of trash and the associated collection processes using its proprietary software, while also pairing multinational clients with local waste companies.  In addition to Rubicon, Morris is also the founder and chairman of Morris Industries, based in Lexington, Kentucky. Morris Industries is his private industrial group "focused on long-term holdings", according to an article by the Lexington Herald-Leader.


 * Politics
 * Morris is conservative. While attending George Washington University, he worked for Kentucky Republicans Northup and McConnell while working in the White House's new-at-the-time Homeland Security Office. In 2004, at age 23, Morris raised more than $50,000 as a fund-raiser for George W. Bush's election campaign.  Apart from Bush's campaign, he worked on election campaigns for Northup, McConnell, and Ernie Fletcher.  After befriending U.S.
 * Senator Rand Paul, a fellow Kentuckian, in 2013 Morris became one of the senator's top fund-raisers thereafter. Paul wrote about Morris and Rubicon in his book, Taking a Stand. Morris held a fund-raiser for Mitch McConnell, another mentor, at the time of his re-election campaign in 2014.


 * Memberships and recognition
 * Morris was named Outstanding Young Kentuckian by the Kentucky Junior Chamber of Commerce in 2007. Later, in 2013, Morris was one of ten "Outstanding Young Americans" honored by the United States Junior Chamber for his founding of Rubicon Technologies. He was also named in the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders class of 2014. Morris was listed among 42 executives honored by the Atlanta Business Chronicle at an awards dinner in August 2018 as Atlanta's "most admired CEOs". He was inducted into the Kentucky Entrepreneur Hall of Fame in Louisville in November 2014.


 * Personal life
 * Nate Morris is married to Jane Mosbacher Morris, founder and CEO of To The Market. They were married on New Years' Eve, 2011. Her father worked for the Overseas Private Investment Corp during the George W. Bush administration and she is granddaughter of former United States Secretary of Commerce, Robert Mosbacher Sr.


 * Hello again, editors. I have learned about the edit request template and am adding it to my unanswered post above to include it in the site's request queue for COI editors like me. Thanks! MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 00:18, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Closing this as the article is almost identical in content now. 15 (talk) 22:32, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Updates to Life and Ancestry
Hello editors,

Having seen no response yet to my above request, it occurs to me that the entirely new article draft may be too large a task for reviewing editors in terms of reference verification and copy-editing by volunteers. In hopes of making my requests more manageable for both review and implementation, I'm here to collaborate with editors by proposing updates to smaller portions of the existing article one at a time.

First, I'd like to address the existing contents within the Life section of the entry. Specifically, I noticed that the section's sourcing could use shoring up, and that Ancestry subsection is unsourced entirely. As such, I recommend replacing the existing Life section and its contents with some version of the drafted Early life and education section I'm proposing below:


 * DRAFT - Early life and education
 * From Lexington originally, Morris grew up in Louisville, Kentucky with his single mother, Miranda Morris, and maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Lewis Sexton, was a former president of the Ford plant United Auto Workers union in Louisville. While attending Eastern High School, Morris reportedly developed political aspirations after multiple spinal fractures derailed his hopes of a football career in the fall of 1996.  At 17, Morris was high school senior class president, captain of the debate team, and one of 96 high school students nationwide selected to represent their states for Boys Nation that year, where he met President Bill Clinton at the time.  Receiving an academic scholarship in 1999, Morris went to George Washington University in Washington, D.C.,  where he studied international affairs and political science.  After graduating in 2003, he spent time in China teaching business management and working for Kentucky's Cabinet for Economic Development before pursuing graduate studies at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

Thoughts from reviewing editors are welcome. If the changes look good, I request that a volunteer implement them for me. I will not update the live article in accordance with Wikipedia's guidelines due to my paid conflict of interest. Thanks in advance for any feedback or consideration. Best regards, MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 19:04, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * These edits have been made. Other interested editors are encouraged to review and made changes as appropriate. Go4thProsper (talk) 02:19, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Early career
User:Go4thProsper and User:15, thanks for reviewing my above request. I will continue working through the draft I've shared above section by section for easier editor review. For my next request, I propose removing the unsourced Ancestry subsection and replacing with this overview of the subject's early career:


 * DRAFT - Early career

Morris worked in several government offices including the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the White House. He has worked in internships and fundraising roles, and as a freelance campaign consultant for several Republicans, including President George W. Bush, Congresswoman Anne Northup, Senate Majority Whip (at the time) Mitch McConnell, Labor Secretary (at the time) Elaine Chao (McConnell's wife), and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Morris befriended U.S. Senator Rand Paul in 2013 when he was among 50 individuals who joined Paul in a tour of Israel.

Above, I had suggested using the section headings Early life and education and Early career but I will let editors decide how to best present his biography. Best regards, MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 13:41, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Yellow check.svg Partly done: Quite a lot of the information given was already covered in the 'Politics' section of the page, such as Morris's fundraising roles and friendship with Sen. Paul. As a result, I've merged any new information into that section. I've also removed the term "freelance campaign consultant" because the source provided does not seem to specify that Morris had worked as such for the people listed; it just states at the end that he "pays his bills at present as a freelance campaign consultant". Sdrqaz (talk) 21:31, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Business
User:Sdrqaz, thanks for reviewing my above request and updating the article. Sorry for the added layer of complexity with content related to other sections, but I'm proposing some changes to the article structure so the content does not align perfectly and I appreciate your willingness to move and merge text appropriately. Ultimately, my goal is to simplify the article framework by reducing the total number of sections for easier reading and better flow.

I'm concerned about the Business section, which currently has 6 subsections. 3 of the subsections have just a sentence or two, so I think some merging here would be helpful. Additionally, the Morris Industries sentence is sourced by the company's website and the Media coverage section is just a list of publications in which he has been featured. The latter does not seem necessary for a Wikipedia biography but of course I will let other editors decide. The list of investors in Rubicon also seems unnecessary. For this request, I propose the following text as a summary of his business career:


 * DRAFT - Business

Morris was included in Fortune list of "40 under 40" in 2014. Morris started Rubicon Technologies, a software company focused on waste and recycling, after collaborating with a high school friend, Marc Spiegel. He used personal credit cards to fund an early website and legal work, founding the company in 2008. Key investors that Morris engaged for Rubicon early on included John Ashcroft, the former U.S. Attorney General in the George W. Bush administration, and others. Rubicon seeks to improve inefficiencies in the waste management industry by analyzing data associated with large volumes of trash and the associated collection processes using its proprietary software, while also pairing multinational clients with local waste companies. In addition to Rubicon, Morris is also the founder and chairman of Morris Industries, based in Lexington, Kentucky. Morris Industries is his private industrial group "focused on long-term holdings", according to an article by the Lexington Herald-Leader.

User:Sdrqaz, are you willing to review this request as well? I appreciate your assistance. Best regards, MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 17:50, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @MS rep 4 NMorris: I should be able to review the request today or tommorow, when I have finished up with other pages. If I forget, please post on my talk page. Sdrqaz (talk) 17:53, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Matt, a couple quibbles: 1) Spiegel seems to be a "childhood friend" rather than a "high school friend" (nitpicking, yes, but they could have been nursery/primary school friends). 2) I can't seem to find any information regarding credit cards in that Lexington Herald Leader source. 3) This sentence will probably be reworded; it seems to use a lot of business jargon/buzzwords that wouldn't normally appear in a Wikipedia article – 4) I'm quite wary of the "Morris Industries" sentences. Terms like "long-term holdings" are essentially meaningless to non-business insiders and seem incredibly vague. Could you find more information for what that company actually is about? –  Sdrqaz (talk) 20:21, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reviewing. I'll respond to your concerns in the same order:
 * I'm open to your preferred wording, but here's a source specifically confirming "high school" friend: "A year later, he founded Rubicon with a high-school classmate and friend, Marc Spiegel, whose family had worked in the garbage business for years."
 * The New York Times article (currently used as an inline citation at end of sentence) says, "Mr. Morris used his personal credit cards to pull together a website and to pay for basic legal work..."
 * Feel free to reword as you see fit. Thank you!
 * There's not a lot of Morris Industries coverage, but this source says, "In addition to Rubicon, he also serves as the chairman of Morris Industries, a private holding company focused on disrupting legacy industries." I understand official websites should not be used on Wikipedia, but just in case an internal description is helpful, the company's site says, "Morris Industries is a Lexington, Kentucky-based conglomerate that is reimagining the industrial economy. The organization works to identify disruptive and sustainable companies with unrealized growth potential, whose current ownership desires an exit strategy, requires capital, or needs a more experienced management team to continue its growth."
 * I hope this helps with your review, MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 11:01, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @MS rep 4 NMorris: Ah... I see. Next time, please put those citations (like the Vanity Fair one) in so it's easier to review. In that case, we don't really need the Bykowicz Herald Leader source anymore. I'm currently leaning towards striking the last sentence: like you said, we should really be relying on independent sources for these things. Sdrqaz (talk) 19:27, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks again. Will try to remember for next time. I'm hoping you're able to update the section as you see fit, unless you need me to resubmit another request with the Vanity Fair citation? MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 18:33, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * No, that won't be necessary: Wikipedia isn't a bureaucracy. The request should be granted in the next few hours; I'm just fine-tuning the wording. Sdrqaz (talk) 20:40, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Yellow check.svg Partly done: I have implemented the edit request here with the caveats previously raised. Sdrqaz (talk) 14:29, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for updating the article. I really appreciate your help. I have just one or two more requests in mind, based on the draft article I've shared up higher on this page, if you're willing to review a couple additional short sections. MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 23:06, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

User:Samantha Reardon Good morning User:104.231.32.81, I noticed you disagree with many of the recent edits I've made to the page regarding Nate Morris' Business career. In particular, facts about the company that do not lend itself to Mr. Morris' public image appear to be removed multiple times. I am trying to convey some context for why Mr. Morris is no longer in the position, as industry publications have pointed to the stock decline as a likely cause. Can you elaborate on why you are actively removing this sourced information? Here are two contributions that are related to the point I am trying to make:
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nate_Morris&type=revision&diff=1119541382&oldid=1119526358
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nate_Morris&type=revision&diff=1119466234&oldid=1119350793 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samantha Reardon (talk • contribs) 15:59, 2 November 2022 (UTC)


 * This is speculatory in nature and being presented as fact - the article you have cited cites a decline in the stock price and Nate Morris stepping down from the CEO role. It does potentially allude to your claim, but citing this as the reason (or at least implying it) should require more detail than is currently cited. The IPO price cited is also wrong. 199.247.32.241 (talk) 04:07, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Memberships and recognition; Personal life
For this request, I propose removing the Philanthropy, Thoroughbred horse racing, and Personal sections, which are problematic for the following reasons:


 * The Philanthropy section is based on official websites
 * The Thoroughbred horse racing section is unsourced
 * The "Personal" (I think this should be "Personal life"?) section uses an official website to mention a book published by the subject's wife. Of course, mention of his wife is appropriate so I've included below.

I propose replacing these three sections with the following Membership and recognition and Personal life sections:


 * Memberships and recognition
 * Morris was named Outstanding Young Kentuckian by the Kentucky Junior Chamber of Commerce in 2007. Later, in 2013, Morris was one of ten "Outstanding Young Americans" honored by the United States Junior Chamber for his founding of Rubicon Technologies. He was also named in the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders class of 2014. Morris was listed among 42 executives honored by the Atlanta Business Chronicle at an awards dinner in August 2018 as Atlanta's "most admired CEOs". He was inducted into the Kentucky Entrepreneur Hall of Fame in Louisville in November 2014. Morris is a member of the Trilateral Commission, as of 2021.


 * Personal life
 * Nate Morris is married to Jane Mosbacher Morris, founder and CEO of To The Market. They were married on New Years' Eve, 2011. Her father worked for the Overseas Private Investment Corp during the George W. Bush administration and she is granddaughter of former United States Secretary of Commerce, Robert Mosbacher Sr.

Happy to answer any questions User:Sdrqaz or other editors may have. Thanks, and best regards, MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 23:06, 25 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I'd remove the horse racing section, as it should into the Personal section. As for Philantrophy, i'm sure some non-official sources can be found, so i will not commit the proposed edits for now. Quetstar (talk) 02:57, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @Quetstar: Will you be doing this edit request? I'm happy to step in and do it. Sdrqaz (talk) 18:25, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * @Sdrqaz Sure, go ahead. Quetstar (talk) 22:06, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * @MS rep 4 NMorris: Sorry for the considerable delay. Would you happen to have access to the National Journal source? I'm struggling to access it; it seems like they instituted subscriber requirements. Sdrqaz (talk) 01:43, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
 * @MS rep 4 NMorris: Ignore that – a kind editor's emailed me the contents. Sdrqaz (talk) 17:03, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your help below. Do you have everything you need here to complete your review of this request? MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 19:56, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I do, thank you. Please bear with me. Sdrqaz (talk) 04:56, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Of course! I just wanted to make sure I didn't need to supply any additional information. I should note, he is a member of a few other organizations. I would like to suggest adding the following sentence to the end of the section proposed above: Morris is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Business Executives for National Security.

Thank you! MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 20:43, 19 August 2021 (UTC)


 * . I have removed those sections, but have altered some information while fulfilling the edit request: I have altered the heading ("Membership and awards") and omitted the Business Chronicle award, since it only seemed to get coverage from Rubicon and the newspaper itself. I am dubious of the promotional nature of Corp so have not added Jane Mosbacher's company's name (especially since it does not have its own article either) and have added slightly more information on her father and grandfather. Thank you for being so patient. Sdrqaz (talk) 23:57, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Politics
User:Sdrqaz, I believe you're still considering the above request, but I'll go ahead and submit a request for the Politics section, which is the last section from the full draft needing review. I propose the following text:


 * DRAFT - Politics

Morris is conservative. While attending George Washington University, he worked for Kentucky Republicans Northup and McConnell while working in the White House's new-at-the-time Homeland Security Office. In 2004, at age 23, Morris raised more than $50,000 as a fund-raiser for George W. Bush's election campaign. Apart from Bush's campaign, he worked on election campaigns for Northup, McConnell, and Ernie Fletcher. After befriending U.S.

Senator Rand Paul, a fellow Kentuckian, in 2013 Morris became one of the senator's top fund-raisers thereafter. Paul wrote about Morris and Rubicon in his book, Taking a Stand. Morris held a fund-raiser for Mitch McConnell, another mentor, at the time of his re-election campaign in 2014.

Thanks again for reviewing. Best regards, MS rep 4 NMorris (talk) 11:17, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Yellow check.svg Partly done: Most of the information was already present in the article. I have merged most of the edit request into the prose, but have not done so for the news of his 2014 fundraiser for McConnell: I'm not sure how important that is, to be honest. I'm also reluctant to retain the Taking a Stand sentence, although it's already in the article. Sdrqaz (talk) 03:06, 2 August 2021 (UTC)