The change
futurist.
Anthropologist. Four-time tech founder. #1 bestselling author. Twenty years inside technology revolutions, and one lesson above all: change has a pattern.
Curiosity of an anthropologist. Instinct of a tech founder. Energy of a rock star.
Sam Rad (born Samantha Radocchia) is an anthropologist who spent twenty years inside technology revolutions, founding four companies through the rise of e-commerce, blockchain, and AI, and learning one thing above all: change has a pattern.
With the curiosity of an anthropologist, the instinct of a tech founder, the candor of a friend, and the calm of an ex-competitive skydiver, Sam shows leaders and their teams the pattern behind every big change, so they're ready for whatever comes next.
She says the things other speakers won't, and she says them with warmth. Her talks lift the overwhelm, hand the room a simple way to read what's happening, and end on the promise every anxious audience needs to hear: you're going to be OK.
Managed by Brandy Gibson at Executive Speakers Bureau, Sam Rad is the speaker you book when your people are facing change and you need them to walk out ready for it.
Sam is a rare individual who has the unique ability to catalyze and inspire everyone around her.
The technologist
Trained in anthropology and linguistics, Sam focused her research on simulated realities, cognitive security, and post-human society. She was among the first anthropologists to live inside the virtual world Second Life in 2009, and in 2020 she deepfaked herself in a project called SamRad.AI. She calls herself an archaeologist of the future: applying an ethnographic approach to envisioning what comes next.
A four-time entrepreneur, she co-founded NYOUM (YOUM.AI), a London-based generative AI communication platform, and Chronicled, a San Francisco blockchain company bringing trust to global commerce and supply chains. Prior to Chronicled, Sam founded two companies leveraging AI to map personal taste.
The inventor
Sam holds a family of patents linking the physical and digital worlds, all filed at Chronicled with co-inventors David Aho, Ryan Orr, and Maurizio Greco, and is noted for early blockchain protocols that contributed to ERC-721, the standard behind NFTs.
The author and producer
She is the author of two #1 bestselling books, Radical Next: Reclaiming Your Humanity in a Post-Human World (2025) and Bitcoin Pizza: The No-Bullshit Guide to Blockchain (2019), and the founder of RAD Original Creations (RADOC), a next-generation media studio producing stories that shape a better future.
RADOC is the producer of Illicit Shadows, an investigative documentary series exploring the dark forces shaping the global criminal underworld. She co-founded Illicit Shadows, LLC with David M. Luna, a former U.S. diplomat and State Department official. Out of it came MISTIC, the Illicit Shadows Media, Technology, and Innovation Convergence institute, mapping where organized crime, emerging technology, and global threat networks intersect. MISTIC is home to Project Helix, an AI intelligence fusion center and predictive convergence system. She also coined perceptual security, a framework for protecting human judgment, trust, and decision-making in an era of synthetic media and AI.
The speaker
A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and former Forbes contributor, Sam has keynoted on five continents and advised the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and the Federal Reserve Bank. True to her “Rad” name, she is no stranger to risk: hundreds of jumps as an ex-competitive skydiver, and the calm that comes with it.
Hundreds of jumps. One lesson.
Before the boardrooms, Sam was a competitive skydiver. Hundreds of jumps that funded her first company while she was still in college.
It's where the keynote's jetpack metaphor comes from, and it's why the “you're going to be OK” at the end lands. She isn't reassuring the room from the ground. She's telling them what it looks like from the 14,000 foot view.
On stage. Worldwide.
Walk out ready.
Sam Rad is the speaker you book when you are facing change, and you want your people to walk out inspired to shape what comes next.
Book Sam →