Sam Smith | Director of Communications
“My mother taught me how to care for people; my father to care about causes. Together, their examples propelled me to live in service for the common good, through creative expression, education, inspiration, and, most of all, love. The Kansas Leadership Center’s mission to bring people together across differences to address the existential challenges of our times has infused my life with greater purpose and meaning.”
KLC Director of Communications Sam Smith is a communications, public relations and marketing veteran with expertise in arts, higher education, leadership and nonprofit administration. Previous roles include director of communications for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, publicist for the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) and director of marketing and communications for Chapel Hill United Methodist Church in Wichita.
He has served as a lecturer in the School of Digital Arts at Wichita State University and as an appointee to the City of Wichita’s Cultural Funding Committee. He received a 2024 Marketing Award from the Wichita Business Journal. Watch this short video for his quick thoughts on mission-driven marketing.
Sam has written for KC Studio magazine, The Kansas City Star, Wichita Eagle, The Journal of the Kansas Leadership Center and Flavorpill.
A trained tenor and violist, Sam is also a classical musician with a specialty in Early Music. He performed, recorded and toured with professional ensembles in San Francisco for many years, including American Bach and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, with whom he sang on Grammy Award-winning and nominated recordings. Other career highlights include an orchestral concert at Carnegie Hall, age 16, cathedral tours in France and England, with performances at Notre-Dame de Paris and Westminster Abbey, and singing backup for Aaron Neville and for the inmates of San Quentin State Prison. He is currently a staff singer at St. Paul The Apostle Catholic Community in Los Angeles.
His community service includes the Board of Governors for the San Francisco Chapter of the Recording Academy (producer of the Grammy Awards), the San Francisco Community Benefit District, Arts Council of Wichita, Regina Klenjoski Dance Company, Wichita Jazz Festival, Tallgrass Film Festival, Wichita Wurlitzer, Inc. and Schola Cantorum San Francisco.
Born and raised near Los Angeles, Sam found his way to San Francisco, where he lived for 18 years. When his fiancée Carmen was appointed professor of flute at WSU and principal flute of Wichita Symphony, they got married, loaded a truck, bid farewell to the Golden Gate Bridge and drove across country to Kansas. After seven years in the Sunflower State, they returned to California. Now back in his hometown, Torrance, Sam is proud to represent KLC from his virtual desk on the West Coast.
He earned a B.A. in classical languages and history from USC and an M. Phil. in classics from King’s College, Cambridge University, with further graduate work at Stanford University.
Sam loves his native state, the movies, jazz, smart books, dapper hats, fast cars, riding his bike, looking at buildings, reading about Kansas and the Great Plains, cooking chile verde, long trips, the National Parks, the desert Southwest (his maternal home country) and Kansas thunderstorms, unknown in California.
