Senior Consultant and Leadership Facilitator

Sam Black serves West Wind as a Senior Consultant and Facilitator, focused on supporting leaders to design and implement learning environments with cultures of belonging and inclusion. Sam has created strategies and solutions to aid education, human service, and justice system agencies throughout his long and successful career. Before joining the team at West Wind, Sam worked in Iowa’s Community Based Corrections system (adult probation and parole) before retiring in 2020. His work was a combination of 21 years of direct service work coupled with 14 years of front line management and agency administration. Specifically, Sam served as the front-line administrator for Iowa’s Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services residential facilities, clinical services unit, clerical support, information technology, and maintenance teams. 

Since 2021, Sam has served as a consultant to education, human service, and justice system agencies, following his work to assist education agencies throughout the state of Iowa as a speaker, facilitator and trainer. Sam is currently in his 3rd year serving as consultant in the College Community School District to implement Future Now programming for grades 7-12.  Previously, Sam consulted with the South Tama Community School District (1990’s) and the Cedar Rapids Community School District 2004-2006. In the CRCSD effort, Sam was the lead grant writer for a two-year grant that provided the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms gang resistance curriculum to McKinley, Johnson, and Polk. 

Sam has facilitated a number of multi-year groups, including a group for Black men in the criminal justice system and a group for men that batter. In 2023, Sam facilitated community discussions on the African American Museum of Iowa’s “Suspended” school to prison pipeline exhibit. Sam also has served as an Iowa Law Enforcement Academy instructor at the Cedar Rapids Police Regional Academy since 2001 and taught the cultural competency class that recruit officers are required to take. 

Sam holds a B.A. in Criminal Justice Administration from Mount Mercy College and an M.A. in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies from the University of Iowa.