Since founding BoardWalk in 2002, he has worked with clients as varied as international relief agencies, national foundations, regional trade associations, and local nonprofits of many kinds. All of his clients share an interest in maximizing their impact through strategy-based insights, services, tools and people.

Before launching BoardWalk, Sam spent 25 years in board recruitment and executive search, 21 of them with two global consulting firms: Spencer Stuart, the world leader in board recruitment (1993-2002), and Egon Zehnder International, for which he opened and built the Atlanta office (1981-1993).

Throughout his career, Sam has been an active trustee of numerous nonprofits and associations. Of particular pride, he founded (and remains vice chair of) the Atlanta Police Foundation, which has tapped a broad-based commitment to enhanced public safety. Locally, he is also on the board of one grantmaking foundation and a member of the allocations committee of another.

Nationally, he is a member of the board of Association of Executive Search Consultants, the worldwide professional association for retained executive search firms, and he serves on the Council on Foundation’s Committee on Inclusiveness, a small group of philanthropic leaders from across the country working in partnership with the Council and its members to develop diversity and inclusiveness in philanthropic leadership, programs and services.

Sam is a frequent speaker and facilitator on issues of board governance, executive leadership and management transition. He has written for Harvard Business Review, Boardmember magazine, and Directors & Boards, and his articles have been redistributed widely by both BoardSource and Guidestar.

A Navy veteran, Sam holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, which he has also served as a member of the global alumni association's board of trustees. Sam is a member of the Rotary Club of Atlanta and an active alumnus of Leadership Atlanta. Earlier, he was chair of the American Running Association and a board member of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Virginia.

In 2004, Sam and his colleagues established annual BoardWalk Governance Fellowships at Harvard Business School to support attendance by trustees and directors at a governance course specifically designed for nonprofit board members. As of November 2011, BoardWalk has sponsored 42 such trustee fellowships to Harvard. While president of the Harvard Business School Club of Atlanta in the 1980s, Sam established a scholarship fund which now generates tens of thousands of dollars each year for scholarships for nonprofit executives to attend various executive courses at HBS.

Sam is a late-blooming athlete who completed his first full marathon shortly before his 50th birthday; he ran his 17th marathon on October 30, 2011 (in Washington, DC). His wife, Barbara VanLandingham Pettway (an executive communications consultant), and his two sons, Cooper and Andrew (one a Washington-based project consultant and the other a Florida-based entrepreneur), are vigorous cheerleaders at his races--and sometimes the only ones left when he crosses the finish line!