Sam joined JUFJ in June of 2017. As our communications manager, he is the one you can blame for weird email formatting, terrible puns on social media, mailings sent to the wrong address, and way too many action alerts during the Maryland General Assembly legislative session. He is also someone you can bother if you need help editing your op-ed or testimony, or if you just have to have more JUFJ stickers. If you can’t find what you’re looking for on the JUFJ website, or if something on the website seems wrong, please let him know!

In addition to his communications work, Sam serves on JUFJ’s labor management committee, and he served on the organizing committee and the first bargaining committee of the JUFJ staff union. He is a proud brother, son, grandson, and great grandson of union organizers with UAW, NYSUT, NABET, IATSE, and more.

Before working here, Sam was a music professor for ten years and a volunteer organizer at the Los Angeles LGBT Center for five. He has canvassed voters and trained volunteers from California to Maine, working on same-sex marriage, trans-inclusive non-discrimination ordinances, and LGBT inclusion in school curricula. He has a PhD in musicology, which is exactly as useful as it sounds. He sings with the Thomas Circle Singers, plays the cello, and has written articles about musicals, gender, and sexuality for a lot of publications that nobody reads. Despite his last name, he lives in Washington, DC with his husband and their two daughters (one human, one dog).

Sam uses he/him/his pronouns.