Bari Samad (he/him)
Director of Communications and Marketing | Strategic Communications
Bari oversees Second Nature’s communications strategy. Over the past 20 years he has conceived, built, and executed numerous creative communications campaigns for mission-driven organizations. The driving force behind Bari’s work is a deep commitment to racial, socioeconomic, and environmental justice combined with a passion for leveraging the digital medium for impactful storytelling, community-led advocacy, and grassroots organizing. He has secured earned media coverage in numerous media outlets including on the PBS NewsHour, in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union Tribune, and the Guardian.
He previously served as Communications Director at the Center for Employment Opportunities, where he built a nascent communications function into a high-performing communications department of six full-time staff and several consultants to support criminal legal system reform. The team he built deployed cutting edge communications strategies and tactics in 31 cities across the country to create socioeconomic mobility for thousands of people returning from incarceration.
Prior to that, Bari was Communications Director at Environmental Health Coalition, where he led strategic and rapid response communications to address environmental racism facing frontline families and immigrant communities. He spearheaded a digital advocacy campaign to secure the passing of California Assembly Bill 423, to add an Environmental Justice (EJ) representative to the San Diego Air Pollution Control District Board. As Digital Director at Green For All, Bari built and mentored a five-person communications team to empower low-income communities of color by creating access to green jobs. He partnered with former Vice President Al Gore’s WE campaign to execute Green Jobs Now, an online-to-offline National Day of Action, resulting in 674 events in 40 U.S. states and over 65 media hits.
Bari holds an M.A. in International Relations and has a pending Ph.D. in Social Justice Education from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). He has presented at Google, Netroots Nation, and the Dreamforce Convention. Bari has volunteered extensively including at the Lakota Sioux Nation, where he built a straw-bale home for a Lakota elder couple and their grandchildren. He has studied the popular education-based Theater of the Oppressed with the late Augusto Boal.
Bari lives in Orlando, Florida. His son Sahir has taught him to re-engage his childhood passion for building LEGO, particularly Star Wars sets.