Hilight's Superintendent in Residence, Dr. Morris Leis

Dr. Morris Leis has spent 32 years in education, the last 17 of them as a superintendent, including 15 years leading Coffee County Schools, the longest tenure the district has seen since 1962. Under his leadership, Coffee County built or renovated 11 schools and facilities, raised graduation rates to historic highs, and earned the Georgia School Board Association's Exemplary designation every year since 2015, all while cutting property tax rates in nine of his fifteen years and never once recommending an increase. In 2025 he received Cognia's Greg Arnsdorff Servant Leadership Award for that body of work. Today, Dr. Leis serves as Hilight's Superintendent in Residence.

Coming out of Covid, Dr. Leis knew Coffee County needed a way to keep morale and improvement moving together. He became one of Hilight's earliest believers, and what won him over wasn't a pitch, it was watching staff retention rise once recognition became part of daily culture instead of an afterthought.

That experience shaped his thinking on leadership. In his whitepaper, Moving the Flywheel, Dr. Leis draws on Collins, Hattie, Covey, and DuFour to argue that purposeful recognition is not just kindness, it is a leadership system. He calls it making deposits, the trust that lets leaders ask for hard things later, and the flywheel that turns small moments of recognition into collective teacher efficacy and stronger student outcomes.

At Hilight, Dr. Leis helps districts put that thinking into practice. Read the Coffee County case study and his whitepaper, Moving the Flywheel, to see the research and results behind it.