different.
We couldn't afford coaches; we just had to do it on our own. I studied all year long for an outcome that took maybe 30 seconds, and it was very solitary. But I got comfortable with competing and I got very comfortable with alone time. I still am.
Both of my parents attended the bees. If I won, there was a moment of celebration; then my dad would always remind me, “Okay, now you need to start studying for next year.” My dad was very much a person who if I brought home a 95, he would ask me where the other five points were. If I brought home a 100, he'd ask, “Was there extra credit?”
I competed in 40 spelling bees, winning 32 of them. The ability to win and to lose—and the difference in how that feels and how you need to show up with graciousness in both of those moments—really stuck with me. I definitely learned that winning is better. But I saw the fragility of it all and just how much luck and fate play into things. You start to [also] recognize that you're always onstage in a way.
It definitely taught me how to cope with pressure. After you've studied the dictionary and spelling lists for five years straight, there's not a lot that fazes you. I used to articulate it as, I've lived a weird life, but it shaped my perspective. And over time, you learn that everybody has lived a weird life.
In a Christian school, there's a lot of emphasis on respecting your father and mother. I did that, and [throughout most of high school], I thought I would become a pastor as well. But, without going into a whole lot of detail, my dad did not treat my mom with the respect that she deserved, and he didn't always treat me with the respect that I probably should have had as well. It was a multifront problem and I had learned how to triage around it, but, at a certain point—I think it was when I turned 16—I realized that I would not be able to continue down this path. So, on February 11, 2002, the day after I turned 18, I moved out.
The family of a friend of mine at school learned what I was going through and opened their home to me. Every year on that anniversary, I call the Wiltons and thank them. What a difference they made in my life.
I didn't realize how poor we were until I moved in with another family. I was used to going to buffets and my dad saying, “Hey, pile up your plate because this is your only meal today.” When I was growing up, it didn't happen often but, as a treat, sometimes I was allowed to get a second bowl of cereal. I remember asking for a second bowl of cereal at the Wiltons', and they looked at me like I was from another planet: their attitude was “have as much cereal as you want.” I didn't even quite know how to process that.
Why does that matter in my journey? It clarified for me that I was on my own. My mom and dad divorced shortly thereafter. The relationships within our family were irretrievably broken. I understood that everything I would ever have or not have would be up to me, and I'd have to go figure out how to make it work. And so that created a hustle and a strength, because there was no safety net.
I see my life in paradoxes in many ways. Where it ties together is that I feel a sense of gratitude and good fortune for amazing folks who saw me and invested in me over the course of my journey. And because of all the different pivot points in my life, I'm acutely aware of how differently things could have turned out. I'm also acutely aware that there are other people in similar situations who, for whatever reason, didn't have those folks who came along and invested in them, and the ultimate question then is, “Well, Sam, what are you going to do about it?” That's what drives me.
I've been very blessed to have folks who've been mentors and who have helped create pathways for me, and I don't really ascribe that to me, I ascribe that to great people who I was fortunate enough to intersect with, who were kind. If certain breaks hadn't gone my way, I wouldn't have even been in a position to go to Taylor [University] or Harvard [Business School]. All these breaks make me feel a sense of responsibility.
I was a deferred admit [to HBS], entering at 23 when most of the folks were entering at 27. In a class of 900, in your first year, you all take the same courses but are divided into 10 sections of 90, and in my section, I ended up being the youngest. I personally didn't observe many Horatio Alger stories in my business school. That was interesting to me.
I remember I was at an investment banking recruiting dinner, sitting with a managing director and a classmate. They started talking about this elite New York City day care that they had gone to or were going to send their kids to, and I felt two simultaneous emotions. One, gratitude as I thought, How the heck am I even here, when during my dad's entire life, he never drew a salary of more than $14,000? I also thought, These day cares probably cost more than my dad ever made.
In parallel, I also felt imposter syndrome. Like, How do I belong here? I already look different. I'm already younger. I'm already from the Midwest. I'm already on my own. I already have these other things that I don't really talk to people about.
I didn't talk about my identity. I talked about being Black, but I didn't talk about all the nuances that were associated with my journey. I was a private person for many reasons, but one of them was that I didn't really like to unpack that.
The truth is, I've felt like an imposter in every role I've ever been in, and it incentivizes me to work harder, but it's given me empathy for other folks who are underrepresented or the only or one of the few, in similar contexts. I learned that between the mix of my private‐person‐otherness‐lone‐wolf‐comfort‐what‐have‐you, I face questions at times, like, What makes you tick? And the ironic thing is that the more that I've been blessed to achieve, it only becomes more othering in some regards.
I applied to Harvard because I realized I knew no one, I had very limited pedigree, and I had no safety net. Even though people were being kind and telling me I had potential, I needed external validation from a brand name.
Then I was deferred: HBS basically told me to get a couple years of work experience. During that time, I had an amazing mentor: Dr. Jennifer Montana, a PhD from Harvard who had her own economic development consulting company. I met her at a business incubator that I was affiliated with in college.
She tells the story that I came up to her and said something like, “I want to go to Harvard, but I don't know how. Teach me.” She spent countless hours reviewing my application, reviewing my résumé, giving me tips and tricks, and eventually co‐signing me and blasting my résumé to 40 of her friends, one of whom was the chief research officer at Forrester [Research]. And that's how I ended up going from a Christian college in Fort Wayne, Indiana, loading all my stuff in a rented van, and driving 13 hours to Cambridge, having not really known what Forrester was until that moment she connected me with them.
While I was at Forrester, HBS connected me with several other African Americans, one of whom was in the school at the time. I remember going to drinks with him and three or four other folks, and having this “aha” moment. Some article had come out about the number of African Americans in corporate America in senior roles, and I remember saying, “If it's not us, who is it going to be? We are the ones who have been privileged enough to be going to this school.”
Basically, I told my friends at the table, “We don't have the option to settle for a white picket fence. We have to swing for the fences and become captains of industry so that we can break down the doors of opportunity for those who haven't had the lucky breaks we have had.”
One of the questions that is always out there is about the level of ambition, and is it relative or is it absolute? From a relative perspective, it can be tempting to have a feeling of having made it when certain trappings of conventionally accepted success have occurred. And yet, I think that those of us who have been in privileged positions have an obligation to find the biggest megaphone that we can to pay that forward. It doesn't mean that you always have that megaphone on. In some cases, you're just building to get a bigger megaphone.
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