Meet the Team

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Meet the Team ~

Abby Nydam

Meet Sam’s Founder

Abby Nydam is the Founder and CEO of Sam, a first-of-its-kind platform offering curated expert guidance, practical tools, and community support for women navigating life transitions—from caregiving and divorce to job loss, illness, and child loss. Inspired by personal experiences and the quiet burnout she witnessed in the women around her, Abby created Sam to fill the systemic gaps in care and support that women too often face. Her mission is bold: to build the global infrastructure for women’s support—starting in the United States.

A global strategist and engagement architect, Abby began her career in New York’s high-end luxury marketing industry, where she saw firsthand the power of brand, aspiration, and narrative. At the other end of the spectrum, Abby has developed and designed products and services for women and families living on less than $2 a day. Her experience has since spanned working in more than 35 countries, evolving into a career at the intersection of social innovation, behavioral insights, and public policy. She has advised global brands and institutions including UNICEF, Meta, Unilever, Tiffany & Co., the World Bank, and Pepsi. Abby served in the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Biden and Ambassador Susan Rice, focusing on social justice and economic policy. At the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she led modernization efforts for the WIC program, driving reforms to better serve women and children in need.

Her expertise lies in data driven, human-centered systems design, public sector innovation, and transforming deep human insight into practical and emotional solutions. Abby brings a rigorous ethnographic lens to her work, uncovering the "why" behind behavior to build support models that are proactive, not reactive. She is a futurist and reformer, committed to building tools and systems that center dignity, utility, and care—and to designing a world where women are never left to navigate the hardest parts of life alone.

A Letter from Abby

I built Sam because I saw what happens when women are left to carry everything alone.

Throughout my career I have moved between worlds. I began in New York City, where I learned how power works, how culture is made, and how women are expected to perform in systems not designed for them. I then spent a decade building products and services for communities in more than thirty-five countries, often in the harshest environments on earth. I watched women hold up local markets, families, and futures, all at once. Later, at the White House, I saw how fragile our own social safety nets are in the United States and how absent they are when it comes to supporting women.

Everywhere I went, one truth remained: women are the backbone of every community, yet we offer them little structure to lean on. We praise their resilience while starving them of support.

Sam exists to change that. It is a first-of-its-kind platform designed to be the support system women have always deserved. We bring together Expert guidance, practical tools, and a community of care so that when life becomes complex, women have somewhere to turn. Sam is built on earned wisdom — the kind that only comes from navigating life’s hardest moments and choosing to keep going.

The idea of Sam challenges a centuries-old expectation that women can and should do it all without help. We reject that. Our work is to create the global infrastructure for women’s support. Because women are not asking for a handout. They are asking for a foundation strong enough to stand on.

That is what we are building. And we are just getting started.

Welcome,

Abby

Founder/CEO of Sam

Meet the Team

  • Maura Salisbury

    Maura Salisbury

    HEAD OF COMMUNITY AND PROGRAMMING

  • Alice Yeh

    Alice Yeh

    HEAD OF STRATEGY AND GROWTH

  • Lydia Yan

    Lydia Yan

    CREATIVE DESIGNER