Meet the Crew: Morgan Cox, Director of Global Business Development
April 28, 2025
Meet Morgan Cox, our new Director of Global Business Development.
Like many on the Privateer crew, Morgan arrived after an unconventional journey that brings a fresh perspective to the world of Earth observation and geospatial intelligence. From West Point to software development and eventually imagery sales, he slowly nurtured a passion for the analytic power of data and collaborative problem-solving. He spent four years as a senior director of business development for commercial markets at BlackSky before joining Privateer, where he’s focused on connecting international customers with Privateer's all-domain data fusion and analysis capabilities.
In this conversation, Morgan shares why he made the jump, the vision for the widespread application of Privateer's technology, and his fairly unique hobby.
What got you to this point on your journey?
Growing up, there wasn't something that I felt like, this is the thing I wanna do when I get older. Coming out of high school, I went to West Point, and I think it was really because it just looked interesting to me. It was something that was very different than anything else I'd done or considered doing, and my father was in the military, so I think I had like a little bit of an interest in exploring that.
When I was there, I studied civil engineering, and then when I graduated, I went into the infantry. A lot of people that study civil engineering go on to become an engineering officer in the military, but I went and did something completely different. I was in the infantry for about 7 years, and when I got out, a friend of mine was working for a company out of DC and he said, 'Hey, there's this role at the company, I think you would find it interesting, why don't you come apply?'
And so I applied and that had me doing intelligence analysis and consulting work, using Palantir software. It was solving problems, analyzing data -- and then, a different role opened up within the same company, that took me from their consulting side into their software development side of the house. So, I started managing the software development for government customers that had very bespoke data that they needed to view in a certain way or manipulate in a certain way; we were building custom solutions for them.
I eventually moved to company that was developing Human Behavioral Analysis software. The idea basically being, whatever you do day-to-day in the course of your work, creates this digital exhaust from your computer. We took all of those different data sources, all this disparate data, and would ingest and present them in a way that would allow people to find activities they deemed to be ‘anomalous’. What activities are interesting versus what's not interesting. You go to the same websites all the time, you're looking at the same databases all the time -- when does it start to be something we're concerned about? It's this idea of you've got a needle in a haystack, let's try to remove all the hay that doesn't matter until you can easily find that needle.
I then moved over to BlackSky, where I focused on growing commercial sales.
When I think about the work I enjoy, a good friend of mine helped me distill it down with the question of, “Industry and company role aside, what are the common themes, at a high level, you like in the work you're doing?” For me, it came down to solving problems, working collaboratively with the team, and interacting directly with our customers. Those are the things that I see as the common themes throughout all of the work I've done and have really enjoyed.
During the interviews, meeting people that were working on both sides of the house in Privateer, and the things they were doing, and the way that they were describing the stuff that they want to do, it seemed to check those boxes for me. I was like, all the things that I've really enjoyed historically, it looks like I'm gonna be able to do here, and that got me really excited.
What things in particular jumped out at you about Privateer?
I think having come from the data collection side of the house, one of the things that I always wanted to do more of was to be able to offer the analytics -- more of the actual problem solving. 'Hey, this is the problem you have, these are the tools at our disposal, let's figure out how we can make you happy with those tools.' And that seemed to be what a lot of people over here were focused on doing. And it's not necessarily using a single piece of data or a single capability. We've got all this really great data that's available to us from so many different providers. It's imagery data, it's non-imagery data, how can we use all that stuff that's available to build the best solution to a problem?
That, to me, is the thing that's really exciting, because it just leaves so much opportunity for what you're going to deliver. I love that.
So, you're here now as Director of Global Business Development at Privateer. What is that role focused on doing?
There's a desire to see the things that we are delivering stateside in the U.S. that are equally valuable internationally, to start seeing those things transition to those customers internationally. So, my role initially is to try to find those opportunities, take the things that we've had success with, and then move those over to customers overseas. In parallel, I will be working very closely with Mollie [Martin, Privateer Director of Go-to-Market Strategy] and others to help focus our commercial outlook for our capabilities.
If this capability is globalized, widely available, put into commercial use, how do you see that affecting the state of things?
Right now there's a lot of capabilities that are out there that are maybe not getting harnessed as well by organizations as they could be. Whether that's because organizations don't want to build out the team with all the individual expertise to pull this down or pull that down, or they don't want to have contracts with a half a dozen companies to solve a problem that they're dealing with. I think if we can kind of be a ladder toward making use of all this new technology that's out there, you'll see a lot of companies that are starting to make smarter decisions, more efficient decisions, because they're able to leverage all this developing technology without having to internally build the capabilities to harness all that technology. I think that that's a really key aspect of what we could deliver to people.
When they have those capabilities, when they can actually use all these different data sources in order to solve a problem, to ask a question and get a smart answer out of it, where do different companies go with that? There's a lot that they can do, that will hopefully make them better stewards of their people, of the planet, of the way that they're using resources on the planet. There's, I think, just a lot of good that could be done with organizations having good data, making better decisions, and just being smarter in the way that they work.
What makes you tick? What are the things that get you out of bed in the morning, what do you love showing up to work for?
I like solving problems, I like working with people, I like being part of a team collaborating with people to solve those problems. Those are the things that have always kind of driven me everywhere I've gone. Here, I think I can continue to kind of pluck those strings and explore how we're solving a lot of fun problems and working with smart people to do that.
I feel like I could go to a lot of different places and feel like I'm contributing something back, but having a feeling that there's something beyond just the money aspect of things is what makes me happy with where I'm working and what I'm doing. If I'm working closely with people to find solutions to things that make a customer happy on the other end, that makes me feel satisfied with my work.
When I've talked to customers in the past and they've said, 'Listen, what we've built together saves me hours of time a day,' then I feel like we've done something good.
Hobbies, what do you like to do?
A lot of my time outside of work goes to family stuff. We have three kids, in high school, middle school, and elementary school, so they keep us pretty busy.
But individually, I like to bake. I bake a lot. I think I've always been really interested in cooking, and personally enjoy it. COVID kicked off my baking situation, as I think it did for a lot of folks. It may have been just because flour was gone everywhere. I had to order from restaurant supplies. And so when you have like 200 pounds of flour sitting in your basement, you tend to bake everything you can, and that has stuck with me.
I bake a lot of stuff: breads, pizzas, bagels, anything that seems kind of interesting. So, that's probably where I spend a lot of my individual time, especially late at night. I’ll just put on headphones, listen to music, and just bake things. And, you know, if you bake too much stuff, you give it away to neighbors and they're happy with that.
