If Meg Loucks Griffiths '98 were to make a documentary of her life, her grandparents would play a role. So, too, would her mother, a few teachers from Loomis Chaffee, a former editor at The Houston Post, and a co-worker at Teach for America. And there would be a scene or two from a car. 

But right now Meg, co-founder of the documentary production company Universe Creative, is too busy telling the stories of others. Universe Creative has a client roster that includes the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and Amazon Studios. A tagline on its website reads: “High-impact documentaries that challenge simple narratives and celebrate unsung heroes.” Its work focuses on social and environmental issues and has received recognition from film festivals and other organizations.  

"My storytelling career has always been grounded in social justice and a desire to do good in the world," Meg says. "I was inspired by my grandparents, who dedicated countless hours to nonprofit volunteer work, and by my mom, who built community through her local restaurants in Houston. I grew up surrounded by hardworking role models who devoted as much time and energy to giving back through art, volunteering, and philanthropy as they did to their careers." 

Meg was introduced to the editor of The Houston Post when she was in middle school and says he helped her realize that storytelling could be the link between her "creative ambitions and passion for social justice." Fifteen years later, he gave her an internship as a photojournalist at The San Francisco Examiner. 

Meg earned a bachelor's degree in English from Colorado College and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. Her first full-time job was as a multimedia journalist at The Houston Chronicle as newspapers were transitioning from print-only to a hybrid of print and digital delivery of content. 

She sharpened her visual storytelling skills at the newspaper by producing short videos for the paper’s website. "On major news days — or while covering hurricanes — I was often shooting, editing, and filing three stories from my mobile office (my car)." Meg says. "It was exhilarating, and a true trial by fire." 

But that fire took its toll. She says she burned out after several years and left the newspaper for a leadership role at Teach for America from 2010 to 2015, where she built the nonprofit's first video studio from the ground up.  

"My grandmother always told me, 'Education is the one thing no one can take from you, so it's the most powerful thing to pursue in life.' Working at Teach For America made that belief tangible beyond my own experience," she says, "and deepened my commitment to social-impact storytelling." 

After Teach for America, Meg worked for two years at Redbird, overseeing content development and digital strategy at the LA-based agency. Then in 2017, she co-founded Universe Creative with Scott Faris, whom she first met at Teach for America. They also worked together at Redbird.  

"Much of our work is with foundation partners who have a clear vision for the message they want to share," Meg says, "and it's our job to transform that idea into a tangible, emotional experience for viewers. At the same time, we produce a slate of independent documentaries." 

One of those documentaries, Impossible Town, which can be seen on PBS and Prime Video, is described as, "When her father dies unexpectedly, Dr. Ayne Amjad is thrust to the helm of a decades-long struggle to aid Minden, a southern West Virginia town beset by cancer-causing chemicals." Their newest documentary, The Life of the Party, premiered August 26 on Documentary+ and Switchboard Magazine and follows three Republican women who are elected leaders from Texas with varying views on the conservative movement. 

In an email Meg describes the hopes of the documentary. "By resisting the impulse to reduce people to political labels and instead making room for contradiction, complexity, and nuance, we can begin to see that neither party is a monolith and that disagreement does not have to mean moral betrayal," Meg says. "Meaningful political progress requires us to sit with that discomfort, interrogate our initial reactions, and resist the pull toward ideological extremism — because the real threat to a functioning democracy is not simply disagreement, but a political culture that treats compromise, curiosity, and moderation as failures." 

Meg says there is no magic formula for making documentaries. 

"It's really just years of curiosity, conversation, and refining ideas until something clicks," she says. "That process never really ends, and that's one of the things I love most about the work."   

Her collaboration with Mr. Faris is 15 years in the making. 

"Our motto is, 'Iron sharpens iron.' The belief that we have to push each other to get to the heart of an idea is central to our creative collaboration," Meg says. Their many years of working together, Meg says, has given them "a creative shorthand that can’t be faked. We know when to challenge each other and when to listen to each other, and when to balance both." 

Meg credits Loomis Chaffee art teacher Walter Rabetz with nurturing her lifelong interest in visual storytelling. 

"I'm surely not the first — or the last — student to mention Walter Rabetz as an inspiration," she says. "Walter nurtured my early interest in photography and ceramics, and he helped me make sense of the world through art at a young age. I don't think I would have pursued photography without his encouragement or the space he created for students to explore their interests. I spent countless hours in the darkroom making prints that he included in school exhibits and the student newspaper." 

She said she would be remiss if she didn't mention another former Loomis Chaffee teacher, Sally Knight, who was Meg's advisor freshman year. Meg was a native Texan, on the East Coast for the first time, and feeling out of place. "Sally created an environment where I could navigate that transition and grow into a more confident, curious student," Meg says. 

She also has remained close to her core friend group from Loomis, despite living on opposite coasts.  

She says she is fortunate to have a career about which she remains passionate. When she is not on the road for production, she enjoys spending time with family and friends in LA and hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains, among other pursuits.  

Universe Creative's work may have won its share of awards, yet the real judges are the ones who let Meg and her co-workers into their world.  

"The most rewarding part of the filmmaking process is sharing the finished film with the people who trusted us to tell their stories," Meg says. "Watching someone see their own experience reflected through another person's lens can be incredibly meaningful.” 

After the completion of Into the Circle, a short documentary released in 2022 about an Indigenous charter school in New Mexico, Universe Creative held a screening for the subjects of the documentary and the school community. “It was a celebration not just of the film, but of the people in it,” Meg says. 

After the screening, the founder of the school told Meg that watching the film made her realize the vision she had spent more than a decade building had come alive.  

"Hearing that was deeply gratifying," Meg says, "especially because we had been invited into a Native community that placed an enormous amount of trust in us. It was a reminder of the responsibility that comes with documentary filmmaking and the privilege of helping people see their own stories in a new way."