Born and raised in the Phoenix jungle back when it was just a dusty Valley of lonely Saguaros and ocotillos, Sam has been excelling in marketing and public relations since before the fur started growing on his forehead.
From ages 20 - 22, he lived and worked in Mexico, where he claims to have promoted a multimodal facility down there as part of NAFTA, but we think he was just kicking it on the beach, building sand castles and knocking back banana tequila shots.
After graduating magna cum laude (that means he actually learned stuff) from Arizona State University with a degree in Journalism, he was accepted into the Peace Corps and had 10 days to decide if he wanted to spend the next 27 months in Guatemala. He made the tough decision to forego living in a hut for that period of time (although the idea of not showering for days was pretty intriguing to him), instead choosing to enter the working jungle at two of the top public relations and advertising agencies in Phoenix. Sam built rope bridges with the media, top business and community leaders and elevated the profiles for his clients in the legal, retail, real estate development, hospitality, restaurant, government and non-profit jungles. Stacking wooden blocks into pyramids and playing Simon Says however still baffled him.
Sam currently swings with the board of directors for Scottsdale Prevention Institute, working to prevent drug and alcohol abuse in the workplace and in families. He has also been a Big Brother since 2005 - his true passion of being a positive role model for kids. (That's too important to make monkey jokes about)
In addition to being fluent in Spanish, he's fairly proficient in English, guest lectures at ASU, is an avid tennis fan (did you see that Federer-Nadal match?), a mean bocce ball player and one hell of an opera singer (well...maybe not). Ask him about the big red rubber exercise ball at last year's holiday party. Of all the green gorillas in our jungle, he's the one with the greenest thumb. Some of us even call him the Plant Whisperer.
sam@davidandsampr.com
