Samantha McCann

Samantha McCann is the Chief Operating Officer of the Bridging Divides Initiative, a non-partisan research initiative at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, that tracks and mitigates political violence in the United States.

Samantha most recently served as the Chief Operating Officer of the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN), a nonprofit focused on spreading the practice of solutions journalism: rigorous reporting on responses to social problems. She joined SJN in its founding year and supported the organization’s programmatic and operational development over the course of a decade.

An experienced leader in organizational development and large-scale change, and a student of both systems thinking and design-thinking methodologies, Samantha also lectures at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) on organizational leadership and management. 

Samantha has trained journalists in nearly a dozen countries, spoken about media development at conferences and universities around the world, and was a 2021 Sulzberger Executive Leadership Fellow at the Columbia Journalism School. Samantha is on the board of advisors for the News Literacy Lab, a UK-based nonprofit that helps people develop the skills to successfully navigate the news and develop an accurate worldview. Samantha has also worked in environmental and fiscal policy research at Seattle University. She holds an M.P.A. from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and a B.A. in Political Science from Seattle University.

Education

• MPA, Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs
• BA in Political Science, Seattle University