Sam is an experienced company leader and business executive with a successful track record working around the world, primarily in sport. He attended Loughborough University and gained an Executive MBA at the London Business School.
Sam was a member of the GB International Triathlon team, earning a sports scholarship to Loughborough, competing around the world as well as commentating, including onsite at the London 2012 Olympic Games. When he hung up his trainers, he joined The Active Network, a global leader in sports technology, and after beginning in London he quickly worked through the ranks and was charged with leading the company’s expansion into Asia. Living and working in both Singapore and Sydney, he became the General Manager, Asia Pacific, and, then, following a private equity buy-out by Vista Equity Partners he relocated to the US as a member of the executive team, with responsibility for Active’s sports business globally as General Manager, Sport.
Following the successful sale of the business to Global Payments Inc, Sam moved to Motiv Sports as President and CEO in 2018, the owner and operator of events around the world, including the Malibu Triathlon, Sydney Marathon and Long Beach Marathon, with a combined participation of 300,000 attendees per year. It was at Motiv Sports, that he was approached with the idea to ‘professionalize Triathlon’.
Sam is now the Founding CEO of the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) and has been in post since 2020. He started when the venture was a ‘PowerPoint concept’ and spent the first 6 months ‘volunteering’, while seeking investors to launch the business. The commercial operation fully launched in early 2020 (weeks before Covid!) and has since grown to a team of 31 permanent employees working across 4 countries.
In January 2024, at a press event in London attended by 100+ media and stakeholders from around the world, the PTO partnered with the sport’s international governing body, World Triathlon, to launch the new 8-leg T100 Triathlon World Tour. Following a successful London T100 event last month (July), the PTO will soon announce a successful Series C funding round, including some of the biggest investment ‘hitters’ in the sports industry – with the goal to make the T100 ‘the F1 of Fitness’.
Sam is 39 later this month (August) and is married and lives with his wife and three young daughters in the New Forest in the south of England.
