Samir is an agile, balanced, and compassionate thought-leader with over 30 years of successful experience in business (publicly traded, private equity, founder-led), entrepreneurship, non-profits, and consulting. 

 

Some accomplishments include:

   •    Leading the human capital strategy that doubled the size and profitability while significantly improving the culture of an award-winning airport concessions company.
   •    Achieving consecutive years of a rising position on Fortune’s 100 Best Places to Work list for the largest full-service dining company in the world.
   •    The integration of a $1B acquisition.
   •    Start-up of a Latin America division for an industrial automation manufacturer which integrated acquisitions in five countries.
   •    Doubling the size and profitably growing an international hotel chain.
   •    Turnarounds of a distressed polished-casual restaurant chain and a specialty materials manufacturing plant.
   •    Profitably growing a franchised chain of Gold’s Gyms.

Selected corporate experiences include:

• Corning: Manufacturing operations

• Choice Hotels: serving in international HR and subsequently running operations

• YUM! Brands: Organization development, effectiveness, and talent management

• Darden Restaurants: Brand & corporate HR leadership, acquisition and divestitures, and culture leadership

• OTG Management: Chief People Officer for airport concessionaire

• BrightView Landscaping: ran field HR

 

 

Samir's diverse worldview has been shaped by traveling to over sixty countries and forty-eight states as well as community involvement helping state and Federal prisoners with reentry, assisting homeless citizens restart their lives, and tutoring/mentoring children from disadvantaged rural and urban neighborhoods. 

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He has also led firsthand community organizing and legislatively lobbying for voting rights, criminal justice reform and immigration, as well as the efforts in Northeast Florida to restore voting rights to ex-offenders.

In addition to a thriving consulting practice, he delivered a regular community policing program for five years for the Jacksonville Sherriff’s Office (JSO) Police Academy, and other programs to transform law enforcement into 21st century organizations. He was elected President of the ACLU of Florida after serving as the Executive Director of Nassau County Racial Equality Coalition. He is now a Guardian ad Liteum, works for the Supervisor of Elections, and sits on three non-profit Boards.

Education includes a BBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Master of Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and a Master of Liberal Studies at Rollins College and completed most coursework towards a degree in the Culinary Arts at Sullivan University and received the only gold medal awarded in 2002. He published a book in 2012, Reshaping the American Dream.

Originally from Milwaukee, WI and raised in exurban New York, he currently resides in Fernandina Beach, Florida and has achieved the desired balance of “giving back.”

 

He is an avid tennis player, swimmer, fanatic sports fan, and lover of animals. His greatest passions are teaching, pursuit of a quest for knowledge, and helping individuals, organizations and communities identify and achieve their fullest potential.