Inspire Luncheon: Connecting Women for Success

Sam Kathryn Campana, well-known arts advocate and community volunteer, has been the leader for many quality of life issues in Arizona.  As a volunteer, she helped found the Scottsdale Foundation for the Handicapped (now Scottsdale Training and Rehabilitation – STARs), Share the Health Foundation (early HPV efforts), the Scottsdale Western Arts Associates (now working on establishing a western art museum in downtown), and Scottsdale Leadership, following her participation in Valley Leadership, Class V.  She is especially proud that her oldest daughter Cassidy is a recent graduate of VL, Class XXV and her middle child Katie is a recent grad of Scottsdale Leadership Class XX.

Sam helped create Arizonans for Cultural Development after serving on the founding Board of the Scottsdale Center for the Arts (was its third president), and went on to be its first successful Executive Director, serving in that role for almost fifteen years.  Concurrently she served on the Scottsdale City Council for two terms, ran for an open seat for Mayor, and served from 1996-2000.  Her vision and planning for an urban downtown, an active waterfront, light rail connections, an ASU presence, an expanded public art program, and a connected open space from Scottsdale’s northernmost border to Tempe are all now coming to fruition.

After an International Leadership Fellowship in 2001, she was recruited by the National Audubon Society to establish their state office Audubon Arizona here – and to head up a membership of 10,000, nine active chapters, and an 8,000 acre Research Ranch.  They have just completed a $6.5million campaign to build a nature education center in the Valley center.  Sam lives in downtown Scottsdale with her rescue dog, Stanley Idaho.