Sam Pettway (sam@boardwalkconsulting.com) is the founding director of BoardWalk Consulting, a firm committed to building strong foundations for nonprofits.®
Since 1977, Sam has advised scores of leadership teams in entities ranging from start-ups to mature multinationals, both for-profit and not-for-profit. In recent years, he has worked with clients as varied as national associations, regional foundations, 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 founding BoardWalk Consulting in 2002, Sam spent 25 years in board recruitment and executive search, the bulk 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 served as a trustee of numerous national, regional and local organizations. In December 2007 he was elected to the Americas Council (i.e., the regional governing body) of the Association of Executive Search Consultants. He is also trustee and immediate past chair of the American Running Association; founding trustee and vice chair of the Atlanta Police Foundation; and a trustee of the American Marketing Association Foundation. He is also a past board member of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Virginia and an alumnus of Leadership Atlanta (class of 1987).
Sam is a frequent speaker, presenter and facilitator on issues of board governance, executive leadership and management transition. Recent audiences have included several annual governance conferences: the Washington State Nonprofit Conference, American Marketing Association Foundation (three times), BoardSource, the Southeastern Council of Foundations (twice), the Georgia Center for Nonprofits (three times), the American Symphony Orchestra League and the University of Georgia's Director's Institute at the Terry College of Business (twice). Sam's articles on management and governance have appeared in Boardmember magazine, Harvard Business Review, the American Banker, and a variety of organization-specific newsletters.
A Navy veteran, Sam holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, for which he has been a member of the global alumni association's board of trustees. While president of the HBS Club of Atlanta in the mid-1980s, Sam established a scholarship fund which generates tens of thousands of dollars each year for nonprofit scholarships to various HBS executive courses. More recently, Sam established the annual BoardWalk Governance Fellowships to encourage nonprofit board members to attend such programs. Since 2003, BoardWalk has awarded fellowships to two dozen nonprofit trustees.
Sam is a late-blooming athlete who took up running in his late forties. He completed 12 marathons between 1996 and 2003 and was training for number 13 when his knees declared "Enough!" His wife, Barbara VanLandingham Pettway, an executive communications consultant, and his two sons, Cooper (a globe-trotting FedEx-er) and Andrew (a college junior), were the most vigorous cheerleaders at his races--and often the only ones still there when he crossed finish line.
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