Sam Gant

Principal

Sam Gant is a Principal at BanyanGlobal. He is passionate about helping owners align their governance and operational structures with their values.

Sam has a wealth of international experience in strategic planning, philanthropic advisory, and implementing corporate social responsibility programs. He has worked in six African countries with private companies, NGOs, and government partners, and his work has been published in the academic journal World Development.

Prior to joining Banyan, Sam worked on economic development, behavioral change, and corporate responsibility projects. Sam launched his career at Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, and subsequently consulted to NGOs in Uganda and Burkina Faso. He was responsible for designing a goal-setting and plan-making program for ultra-poor people in rural communities, and worked to scale up successful anti-poverty programs. He has also worked in the for-profit sector, supporting community consultations and resettlement planning on a mining exploration site for Teranga Gold Corporation in Burkina Faso. He most recently worked as a behavioral change consultant for the University of Pennsylvania Social Norms Group. In this capacity he collaborated with UNICEF and the Malian Ministry of Communication to train 32 surveyors and collect data from 4,000 respondents in rural areas. He presented a social norms diagnostic of child marriage and infant malnutrition to senior Malian officials and the UNICEF Country Director, helping to shape UNICEF’s five-year child marriage intervention plan.

Sam holds a BA from Haverford College with a double major in Political Science and French, an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He enjoys international travel (his travel blog has attracted over 15,000 views), homebrewing IPAs, and listening to the latest Planet Money podcast. He loves spending time outdoors, and has backcountry skied the bowl of Tuckerman Ravine on Mt. Washington five times. He lives in Boston, MA.