Sam is Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan and a Visiting Fellow at King's Academy. She was previously Academic Director at King’s Academy (2022-2026) and has held senior institution-wide roles at University College London, overseeing academic practice and professional development, and contributed many years to The Open University in faculty and central leadership positions focused on learning and teaching.

Sam is a physicist by background but gradually moved into education focused roles. She has many years’ experience of capacity building work around online and distance learning and has worked on projects and consultancies in Central Asia, Russia and Bangladesh. She is particularly interested in programme and assessment design and supporting academics to consider a whole programme approach to learning design.

She has designed and developed MOOCs on the FutureLearn platform and developed a number of short courses for staff and students on UCL’s externally facing Moodle platform eXtend. She recently led an institutional Assessment Transformation project at King’s. Sam is a principal fellow of the HEA and is a member of AdvanceHE’s Fellowship and Accreditation Expert Advisory Group.