Samantha Adams Becker

One day at a time, and honestly, being my authentic self. Sometimes that might mean I'm crying one day, other times it might mean it's been a rough day so I'm gonna crank up the tunes and have a spontaneous dance party by myself in my office. I think it's just about keeping it real. I also have such a wonderful family and wonderful girlfriends, so we'll go out for dinner. I think just having a life - this business is in a lot of ways my legacy, my love, but I also have other things going on outside of this, and I understand life ebbs and flows and things can change. So it's one day at a time, and I feel like in my career I've established enough capability and trust in myself that I feel like I could get through anything. I think it's just a resilient attitude - like, whatever, and if I have a bad day, let's just laugh about it. The next day will look different.

The best career advice I've ever received is also the best personal advice I've ever received, and that's just to be you. Everyone else has taken - be your most authentic self, lean in to what makes you different. I think I never started out in my career thinking I'm gonna run a niche storytelling agency for education. No way. But what happened was, I fell in love with the field. You can't help what you love. And I'm also a creative person, so rather than trying to fit myself into something cookie-cutter, I decided, hey, there's a really big need, even if it's niche, and I can jump in and help. Also, I think that humor is a really important survival skill, and often underrated. Finding the humor in something, being silly where you can - I think all of my clients and my team would say we joke around a lot. Our profession is not life or death. Working for a smaller agency and having my own agency, we can take a little bit more risks and be a little bit more out there. And that's okay. I think oftentimes when we take those creative risks, that's where we see the most reward or impact.

You don't need to feel imposter syndrome. I know it's hard to avoid, I still feel it often, but you've got this. You actually have the knowledge and the skills and everything you need. So don't be afraid to speak up, to take up space, and to share your perspectives. Yeah, you are way more powerful than you even know. And sometimes it's hard to even see your own influence, right? It's sort of this invisible cloak that you have. But when you start sharing, and you start leading by example, you're gonna inspire other people to do that. You got this.

I think that education as a field has largely been underfunded in many ways, and teachers specifically are underpaid. When we're trying to say that education is important and everyone needs an education, which I believe, we need to be compensating the people that spend all day creating curriculum and teaching learners. I think pay teachers and educators more - I think we'd also attract even more people to the field if we do that. We have amazing teachers, and I think we'd get even more, and even different types of people. Another challenge is the pace of technological change. We've been talking about immersive learning, virtual reality, and adaptive technology for a while, but artificial intelligence has certainly changed the game. While I embrace ethical AI and build bots to help build storytelling capacity with organizations, the uptake of AI, understanding of it, and even how AI platforms are built is going to be a challenge and also an opportunity. How are we gonna integrate AI into teaching and learning in a way that actually helps, but then also how are we going to prepare people for jobs in the future where AI is intersecting with every industry and profession? That has implications for every field. In education, it becomes a matter of every school and college having its own understanding or strategy and collaborating on the programming that needs to be created, not just for degree-seeking students, but for the entire community.

I think I landed in this space because the organizations I work with are mission-driven. We're here to make a difference in people's lives and create opportunity where there hasn't been before. One program I get to work on at ASU is called Earned Admission, where if you get rejected by a four-year institution, you can pay $25 to start taking real ASU courses online, and if you get a C or above, you can transcript your grades and automatically be accepted to ASU if you fulfill the requirements. 10,000 people have been accepted to ASU that may have otherwise never attended college or felt like higher ed wasn't for them. So I love working on values-driven projects like that that are really about expanding access and creating opportunities. I also value transparency and honesty. I think it's really important, and you build trust by being able to share your honest perspective and not be afraid to say, hey, this isn't going exactly as we planned, let's have an honest conversation and pivot where we can. I really value transparent, close relationships with clients, and I always say I work with the kindest people. I feel so lucky. All the people I work with are mission-driven too, and they really are in it for the right reasons. So just feeling like we're all working together to change people's lives, I think is what it's about. In order to tell a story of impact, you gotta start with empathy and understand where learners are coming from, where faculty are coming from, what their needs are. Empathy plus strategy.