Vera Institute of Justice

Sam is a senior writer on Vera’s communications team, where he tells stories designed to reduce the suffering caused by the criminal legal system and build meaningful justice in its place. Before joining Vera, he managed all communications for Neighborhood Defender Service, a national public defender office serving Harlem, Detroit, and Texas. He worked with public defenders and their clients to lead communications and policy campaigns aimed at decarceration. Those efforts included exposing the conditions that killed 16 people on Rikers Island in 2021; organizing for vaccinations for incarcerated people at the height of the pandemic; and uncovering a surge of arrests and prosecutions targeting Black people in Detroit that amounted to stop and frisk. Sam has also worked as a researcher on Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 and on the communications team of the International Center for Transitional Justice. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ithaca College.