The future won’t coordinate itself.
I'm Sam. I lead global industry communications for WPP Media.
I’ve spent my career helping leaders and organizations navigate change and imagine more ambitious futures. From research and political strategy to reputation, experience design, AI, and global media, each phase has taught me something new about the role communications plays in shaping what people believe, decide, and do.
Now my focus is on using communications to solve coordination challenges: creating the clarity, trust, and shared reality people need to act together and unlock better futures.
Artificial intelligence
The capabilities, risks and social implications of rapidly advancing AI.
Institutions
How organizations earn legitimacy and adapt to compounding change.
Narratives
The stories that shape beliefs, decisions and collective action.
Coordination
Designing systems for alignment, trust and execution at scale.
Economic transition
From a labor-based economy to an intelligence-based economy.
Reality
How we create, perceive and engineer shared reality.
The Great Transition
Essays and research on the political, economic and cultural shift from a civilization organized around human labor to one increasingly organized around machine intelligence.
Special Circumstances Group
An advisory practice focused on reputation, communications and institutional strategy during periods of technological transition.
Communications Creates Reality
Exploring communications as a causal force that shapes beliefs, behavior and outcomes.
Reference Library
A living collection of books, papers, essays, talks and ideas that inform my work.
Coming
Wave
Nations
Fail
Ministry
for the
Future
Consent
Alignment
Problem
This is where the randomized photo archive belongs: not as the main header, but as a living visual record. It makes the page personal without forcing the photos to compete with the thesis.
WPP Media
Global Head of Industry Communications
GroupM
Executive Director, Global Corporate Communications
Essence
SVP, Global Marketing & Communications
AI Policy Labs
Co-Founder
Huge
VP, Communications
Rubenstein
Director, Marketing & Special Projects
Political Consulting & Research
GQR, UMR Research and others
I believe communications is the discipline of creating shared reality.
Most people think communications begins after strategy. I think it begins before strategy. Because strategy is itself an act of communication.
I live in Minneapolis with my wife Christine and our three children. I grew up in New Zealand.