Back: The Team

Sam Carter

Founding Principal

Sam Carter is a Founding Principal of Resilient Cities Catalyst (RCC).  In this role, he serves as RCC's lead on regional resilience building and leads several strategic initiatives, including the California Resilience Partnership (CRP) and the Mediterranean Climate Action Partnership (MCAP). He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Urban Design at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. 

Sam was a leader at 100 Resilient Cities where he served on the Executive Team and developed the Resilience Accelerator as a program supporting eight 100RC cities across the globe.  Prior to that, he served as Managing Director leading the ResilienceTeam at The Rockefeller Foundation.  In that role he led the Foundation’s partnership with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development on the National Disaster Resilience Competition, as well as its work in the New York region post Sandy and in the Louisiana state ongoing long term recovery efforts.  He also served as an advisor on the Global Resilience Partnership, a collaboration with DFID and USAID to connect humanitarian response to long term planning to improve the strength of communities and reduce repetitive losses.

In 2007, Sam helped to establish the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University, where he served as Associate Director and managed the research phase of Rebuild by Design.  Prior to working at the IPK, Mr. Carter worked as Program Coordinator for the President’s Office of the Social Science Research Council, where he coordinated the SSRC Katrina Task Force and developed two books for the Privatization of Risk Series with Columbia University Press.

Sam holds an MPA in Public and Nonprofit Management from the Robert F. Wagner School for Public Service at NYU and a BA in Media Ecology from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU.