Sam is a passionate leadership coach and organisational facilitator with over 20 years’ experience shaping culture, strategy and customer experience – working with top-tier organisations like Diageo, Woolworths, Virgin and Graincorp under roles like Managing Director and Head of Learning & Development. Having led enterprise-wide capability initiatives himself and coached senior executives through large-scale transformations – from digital enablement to DEI and wellbeing programs – Sam draws on a rare combination of commercial experience, human insight and behavioural frameworks to create aligned outcomes that drive both people and strategy forward. At Playmakers, he facilitates systems-level interventions that unlock group insight, energise teams, and catalyse enterprise-wide transformation. Clients value Sam’s natural presence yet direct and intuitive problem-solving approach, with a willingness and ability to engage in the robust debate and ideation needed to experience breakthrough performance.
Areas of expertise:
- Leadership development & coaching
- Culture, capability & behavioural change
- People & Culture strategy
- High performance teams
- Personal and professional growth
- Executive facilitation & stakeholder alignment
Sam has a natural and engaging style, yet direct and intuitive with an ability and willingness to engage in a robust debate. He is a divergent thinker who is quick to recognise opportunities to optimise performance. He leverages a depth of retail and FMCG industry experience supported by data driven insights and draws on models and frameworks to shape his thinking.
Sam spent 13 years of his career at Diageo, across multiple functions in various leadership roles, managing large and diverse teams. This is where Sam’s passion for coaching and helping people grow was sparked. He developed and delivered the Diageo senior leadership programs and then made a move full time into People and Culture joining Woolworths in 2015.
As Head of Learning and Development for the Woolworths owned Endeavour Drinks, Sam was responsible for developing and delivering the leadership, culture and capability strategy to achieve the business ambition. This included the creation of a leadership framework and culture and capability roadmap. He was the ‘Change’ lead for major people initiatives as well as coaching senior leaders and facilitating teams, large and small to identify the levers to breakthrough performance. He developed and delivered capability across Digital transformation, Diversity and Inclusivity and Wellbeing to the leaders across the organisation.
For the last 18 months, Sam has been a senior consultant at Human Synergistics working with a range of clients including Woolworths, Virgin, Graincorp and IMB along with several start-ups and scale ups.
Sam has a Bachelor of Communications from CSU and is also an LSI accredited practitioner, Neuro TREAD accredited facilitator and Extreme Thinking accredited facilitator. Sam has also completed IECL Level 1 and 2 organizational coaching.
Born and Bred in the Hawkesbury district and having lived and worked overseas, Sam now lives in Forestville in the Northern Beaches of Sydney with his wife and four Boys where they are active members in the Long Reef Surf club.
