Sam Johnson is a strategic leader and entrepreneur recognised for his ability to mobilise people and ideas to create impact. Best known as the founder of the Student Volunteer Army, Sam has built a career turning collective energy into movements that matter.
He is a senior leader with STILL, the entrepreneurial family office of Hideaki Fukutake, where he helps transform companies and causes with a focus on public interest capitalism and long-term value creation. In this role, Sam works at the intersection of governance, community, and design—ensuring projects are both strategically sound and socially relevant.
Sam chairs Metro Magazine, design agency DDMMYY, No More Boring, and the Student Volunteer Army, and is a founding Trustee of Paererewā - the 1,000 Year Bench Project.
Through the Paererewā - the 1000-Year Bench Project, Sam is pioneering a bold new model of public art and civic investment that helps us focus on what is really important; places of reflection to be uniquely human. The initiative aims to install 1,000 beautifully designed benches across Aotearoa New Zealand, each backed by a perpetual endowment to ensure its care for generations. For business and civic audiences, Paererewā is a tangible example of long-term strategic thinking—combining design, finance, history and community trust-building to deliver lasting value beyond a single generation.
Sam’s disaster leadership experience continues to resonate across Australasia. He scaled the Student Volunteer Army to reach 50% of New Zealand’s secondary schools, with pilots operating Tasmania and South Australia, embedding service in the education system. This work has led to responses to floods, fires, and crises for over a decade. Most recently, in the 2025 Mōtueka floods, Sam and the SVA mobilised volunteers to assist more than 100 homes within days, showing how systematised models of impact can rapidly scale in times of crisis.
Recognised as Young New Zealander of the Year, Communicator of the Year, and recipient of the Sir Peter Blake Leadership Award, Sam was recently named the Institute of Directors’ Emerging Director of the Year (Auckland).
Today, whether in governance, strategy, or disaster response, Sam continues to focus on helping teams and organisations unlock their shared purpose—and transform it into meaningful action that lasts.
Talking Points
Build Your Own Army!
Sam Johnson famously mobilised an army-for-good of 11,000 students to respond to the New Zealand earthquakes. Sam took social media and a clear need to mobilize an army' of helpers to solve a real problem. But how do you keep a good idea going and how do you integrate small ideas into local institutions, businesses and everyday behaviours? Sam's journey is filled with real, raw and practical approaches to leadership and life. His team's work has attracted everyone from Prince Harry to Hillary Clinton to the Parkland Students to visit and learn how a group of students turned a disaster into a national movement that has now has 2% of the county's population involved. Build Your Own Army!
Who this is for: Sam is most popular within the infrastructure, human resources, insurance, real estate, health care, sales or government industries given the direct relevance his work has to these sectors.
- Education and training industry events including teachers, principals, school supervisors, education department staffers, consultants, trainees
- Environment and waste conferences including local government, waste mitigation, utility, safety, three-waters, storm mitigation, disaster resilience, disaster risk reduction, disaster preparedness, FEMA, Fire Service, Volunteer Sector, emergency response sector
- Economic and community development at the national, state, regional, and local levels.
- Public service, service designers, public sector managers
- Hospital, medical, community health, nursing, health leadership events, health technology conferences
- People
- Agriculture or rural-focused events - events that attract people from smaller towns who are worried about the changing nature of communities
Key Takeaways:
1. Culture and leadership: culture is built by sharing responsibility for risk. Giving teams permission to execute is the most essential element to complex leadership challenges.
2. Strategy and action: You need three people with a combination of five skills to make anything happen: Vision, Plan, Promote, Do, Review.
3. How to build movements for impact, not empires for ego.
Excellent energy, positivity and engagement of the audience. ... keep reading Wellington Regional Primary Principals Association
Sam connected and engaged with everybody in the audience. He has some great experiences and stories to share that get to the hearts, minds and souls of the audience. Well done Sam!
Sam was a delight to work with and we absolutely loved his presentation. Sam took time to come and mix and mingle with our delegates prior to his presentation the following morning. He was interested to get to know people and learn more about our industry group. Sam was a fantastic speaker. He was articulate, professional and his story was inspiring. Sam has the ability to convey a very human story with a business message. He was warm, funny, and he is a very special young man that will succeed at whatever he chooses to do.
