CTAP Talks: May 14th, 2019 - Sam Campana

Hear how a dumpster-lined, utility corridor canal was transformed into today’s vibrant Scottsdale Waterfront.  How did the final leg of the Valley’s loop freeway come to be in that location?  How did Scottsdale preserve almost a third of its landmass to protect the McDowell Mountains and Sonora Desert within its borders?  How do we as a community continue to protect that billion-dollar investment?

Sam Campana, well-respected advocate and public policy maker on behalf of the arts and environment, has been the leader for many quality-of-life issues in Arizona. 

The former mayor of Scottsdale (The West’s Most Western Town and a Most Livable City) – her home for 50 years, she served on the Scottsdale City Council for twelve years – the last four as mayor. Her vision and planning for an urban downtown, an active waterfront in the sustainable and vibrant downtown, an ASU presence, an expanded public art program (including the 7-mile stretch of the Pima Freeway murals), a mutually productive relationship with the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community, and a connected open space from Scottsdale’s northernmost border (the 30,000+ acre McDowell Sonoran Preserve) to Tempe have all come to fruition.   

Sam was a Fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington DC and studied public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Sam helped create Arizonans for Cultural Development and went on to be its first successful Executive Director, serving in that role for almost fifteen years.  She is Chairman Emeritus of the organization, now known as Arizona Citizens for the Arts and also had a long stint on the Scottsdale Public Arts Board.  She served on the founding Board of the Scottsdale Center for the Arts (was its third, first woman president). 

She helped found the Scottsdale Foundation for the Handicapped, Share the Health Foundation, the Scottsdale Western Arts Associates (which recently established a western art museum in downtown), and Scottsdale Leadership (who selected her for the prestigious Drinkwater Award), following her participation in Valley Leadership (who selected her as Woman of the Year 2010).  She has been appointed by four mayors, four governors and two presidents to serve on various arts/enviro boards, commissions and task forces.  She also has served on three corporate boards. 

After an International Leadership Fellowship in 2001, she was recruited by the National Audubon Society to establish Audubon Arizona here – and to head up an organization of 10,000 members, nine active chapters, and an 8,000-acre Research Ranch.  Audubon Arizona completed a $7.3million campaign to build a nature education center, the Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center – open to the public and embraced by the community since October, 2010.  Sam continues to volunteer after heading a 3-year effort to site a similar project in Scottsdale.    

Following 12 years with Audubon, she now is writing a book and speaking about epiphanies manifested while making public policy and breaking glass ceilings in her public and private life. Sam lives in a 50-year-old former farmhouse where acres of pecans once grew in downtown Scottsdale with a pound dog, Harold, a desert tortoise, 2 chickens – Babe and Emma.