Grant Samms

Background

About Grant Samms

One of the most insightful moments in my career came in an Oklahoma cattle pasture, where three wind turbines had just been installed. While the project should have been a financial win for the rancher whose land I was on, his emotions were instead mixed. At some point, the out-of-town installation crew had left a gate open on his property. A single moment of thoughtlessness – one that a local would have known the significance of –could have meant a loss of tens of thousands of dollars if his livestock would have escaped. Our seemingly simple conversation about wind energy development was, below the surface, weaving through a web of issues touching class, economics, environment, history, culture, and social justice. From policy discussions with state lawmakers in Maryland, to seeing the impact investor-owned farms have on tribal agricultural production through aquafer depletion in Montana, I’ve seen again and again that connections among environmental, economic, and social factors undergird every facet of our climate crisis. If we fail to properly account for this intersectionality, even our best ideas will fail. My attentiveness to this reality has been foundational to my success to date as a climate professional, and I have established a unique niche everywhere I have worked by actively applying this lens. Through this lens, I design the climate solutions and policies our world desperately needs. I excel at illuminating complex socioenvironmental issues with both the quantitative and qualitative research skills needed to create human-centered solutions. My research efforts have created a community-based socioeconomic risk model for a warming world and reported on patterns of resilient and sustainable urban development. My skilled communication has translated the intersectionality of climate change through publications like Forbes and Smart Cities Dive.