Doug Beyer uses Prime Speaker Gazana, Progenitus, Vish Khal, Rhys the Redeemed, and Aurelia the Redeemer as commanders.  Tolarian Prof uses Teysa.  Rune-Tail Kitsune Ascendant would work well.

Reddit tip for EDH deck building: I learned from a blog or something, a mnemonic device for remembering EDH deck-building guidelines. "My Deck Tickled A Sliver". This is meant to start with most important, and work down to least important.
Mana If you don't have any other mana generating cards (artifacts, elves, etc) you'll want 40 land cards. Try to be strict, and remember, even if you put in an artifact that can generate mana, you'll need some way to get it on to the table in the first place. It's theoretically possible to have no land, but that trick takes up the whole deck.
Draw I've struggled with this, in trying to convince myself it's worthwhile. Cool creature, or draw-function? Well I've come to learn the draw is vital. I'm not seasoned enough to elaborate, but running out of cards and top-decking is terrible, and having options in-hand is not terrible.
Threats Spells, monsters, combos, whatever. These are cards you use to challenge your opponent, hurt them, damage their table-state, so on.
Answers Counters, hexproof, protection, bouncing etc. This is how you help your deck survive opponent's Threats.
Synergy Seems odd to put this last, but here is where you fill in the gaps with things that work off your deck's theme. You can put combos, flavor and generally just fun things in this section, but none of it will even work without the rest of the list being satisfied.