Dale Morris
City of Charleston Chief Resilience Officer
Charleston, S.C.
Dale Morris is chief resilience officer for the city of Charleston, S.C. Dale's primary role is the integration of comprehensive water management, planning and adaptation processes into city policy, land-use, and water projects, and the addition of broader resilience approaches to city operations. He is the city’s lead for the USACE Charleston Peninsula Coastal Storm Risk Management Project, the city’s comprehensive, integrated water plan, its flooding and sea level rise strategy and other key projects.
Dale previously served as director of strategic partnerships at the Water Institute of the Gulf, an applied, technical research not-for-profit based in Louisiana. He directed the Water Institute’s outreach to and engagement with communities, municipalities, states, and organizations outside of Louisiana and guided the Institute’s Living with Water and resilience strategy work in post-Harvey Houston, the Dutch Dialogues and related work in Charleston and Virginia.
From 1994-2018, Dale served as senior economist at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Washington, D.C., and, beginning in 2005, as director of the Dutch government’s water management and adaptation work across the U.S. He started his career in the U.S. Air Force and was legislative director to two members of Congress. Dale is co-founder of the Dutch Dialogues, a workshop process that integrates stormwater, groundwater, tidal and surge risks with planning and engineering in targeted cities. He holds a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and an M.A. from the University of Virginia.