From an early age, Samantha was both creative (winning awards in the arts or graduating with honors in fine arts) and successful in STEM based-fields. The ability to use both sides of her brain enabled her to navigate through the world a little differently, and she used to create a unique skill set in her career. She also had a passion for building and maintaining intentional relationships, as she relocated for school and her career throughout her life.
She grew up in a multi generational family of healthcare providers, volunteered and worked in hospitals since middle-school, completed research internships during undergraduate and post-graduate education, and helped her mother with billing and paperwork during the summer in the private practice her father still owns today. During her graduate coursework to complete a Master in Public Health, she started to reconsider her path to become a physician. She focused on healthcare policy, economics and behavior and became more passionate about preventative care and wellness. A year into medical school, she made the decision to leave a lifelong path to becoming a physician and following in the many footsteps before her to carve out a path that had no road.
That’s where she got a little creative and took a role at a start-up company a former classmate started that was backed by Angel Investors. This brief diversion opened a window into building a company from scratch, how important teams and the coach-ability of a founder was to its success, and how big ideas get funded. That view never left her when she embarked on a career in Clinical Trial Development.
A critical thinker who has a natural ability to problem solve and is highly adaptable, she excelled in this industry. During her 18 year career in Clinical Trial Development, she also became an SME for a complex programming system that is used to manage drug supply in clinical trials. Self-taught, she was able to earn the trust of her colleagues and industry professionals to execute highly technical systems and deliver a product - and repair ones that were poorly designed.
While her left brain was fully engaged every day, the naturally creative right side of her brain was not. In 2015, she started to create large networking events in her home city of New York “just for fun.” She was to not only create a memorable experience for guests but also intentionally bring people together while generating a substantial profit. An itch had been scratched. After relocating for a job to San Francisco, she created an Instagram for her labradoodle, Poppy, with the intention of creating a community and quickly grew her following to nearly 14,000 followers with multiple brand partnerships simply by creating authentic content and connecting with founders. She remained intentional about the products she endorsed in terms of environmental impact, understanding how social media can push over consumption. She also continued creating experience-driven events and supported female founders develop the story, or the why, behind their company. She now had a larger view into that window: which brands made it, which didn’t, and why.
In 2019, Samantha made a decision to move back to Texas, the state she fell in love with during a college internship. Three years later, she exited with a women’s health biotech company and took some time to explore her next career decision. While she has a passion for bringing new drugs to market, she knew R+D was never meant to be the final stop. While interviewing for that role, she found herself increasingly more frustrated with the companies getting funded when she researched the leadership teams and made a promise to herself to one day be in the room making that decision. She was introduced to SWAN Impact Network through a golf-friend who is also an Angel, and joined as an Associate in February 2024. Shortly after, she launched her consulting practice out of a need she saw growing within the investment community and the angels that want to fund them at early stages.
How do we fund the right companies that will be successful enough to bring life saving or preventative technology to market and exit? And how do the right companies get funded by investors who align with their vision and can be partners on the way to success? Sounds simple. But it’s not. And it takes decades of expertise to support that preparation and decision-making, especially in a difficult fundraising environment with few exits. That’s where Samantha steps in. She serves as a supportive bridge between both parties, known or unknown, to find and fund the right ones and help founders solve complex problems to ensure success on the path to exit.
In addition to her primary career, she is an avid golfer who is also the President of the Austin Chapter of LPGA Amateurs and manages sponsorships within the organization, serves on the board of SWAN Impact Network, and writes a sub-stack. She still maintains her dog’s social media accounts and working with brand partners, because well… it’s fun and helps small brands reach large audiences on their way to exit. While on the surface, her interests seem to diverge - they all intersect with her skill set. Just another way she uses both sides of her brain to see the world a little differently than most.