Kim Samuel

Kim Samuel is director of the Samuel Group of Companies, a family business founded in Canada in 1855, specializing in industrial manufacturing and distribution of steel and other metals.

In her philanthropic capacity, she serves as chair and president of the Samuel Family Foundation. As an activist, educator, and movement builder, Ms. Samuel is founder and chief belonging officer of the Samuel Centre for Social Connectedness, a Montreal-based “think-and-do tank” that partners with leading advocacy groups and research organizations to conduct ground-breaking work in the field of building belonging, She has lectured at institutions including McGill University, the University of Oxford, Harvard Law School, and Vancouver Island University, and during her time as a Professor of Practice at McGill’s Institute for the Study of International Development, she developed and taught a course addressing social isolation and social connectedness through the dual lens of program and policy development. Ms. Samuel was recently named the first-ever Fulbright Ambassador for diversity and social connectedness. She has organized three Global Symposia on Social Isolation and Deepening Social Connectedness, with a fourth currently slated for Fall 2022. Her book On Belonging: Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation will be published later this year.