Sam Santiago, CDE®, is an award-winning senior leader with over 35 years of experience in CSR/ESG, DEI, administration, operations, and nonprofit management across the travel, hospitality, tourism, health, logistics, spirits, events and entertainment, digital marketing, and retail industries. He has held leadership roles with American Airlines, Hilton Worldwide, the American Heart Association, and Ross Stores, Inc., and is currently the Co-Founder and Chief Administrative Officer of Grupo Sant Cobián—a start-up corporate group based in Mexico dedicated to artistic talent management, event planning and production (concerts, festivals, conventions), a new-to-market artisanal tequila, travel and lifestyle advisory services, and the soon-to-launch International Association of Boutique Hotels.
A global citizen who has traveled, worked, and lived in more than 500 cities across 60 countries on every continent except Antarctica, Sam brings a truly international perspective to his work. As an engaged civic leader and patron of the arts, he has served on numerous boards and committees, including those of the United Nations, Points of Light Foundation, the European Commission, the National Diversity Council, Junior League International, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, the Dallas Mavericks, the Arts and Culture Advisory Commission for the City of Dallas, and the Arts Council of Fort Worth, among others.
Sam’s leadership and service have earned him numerous awards and recognitions, including the American Airlines Earl G. Graves Award for Leadership in Diversity and Inclusion (2010); the President’s Volunteer Service Award, bestowed by Points of Light Foundation on behalf of President Barack Obama (2012); the American Heart Association’s Heartbeat Award for advancing health equity (2019); the Change Agent Award from Ross Stores, Inc. (2021); the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Champion Award from the National Diversity Council (2022); and Líder Social MX (Social Leader, 2024) in Mexico.
Tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you start working with the MMIAM program?
Let’s start from the beginning. I’m originally from Puerto Rico. I was born, raised, and educated on the island, and from a very early age, my parents were always interested in taking us to cultural events. For example, we went maybe 10 years in a row to the International Folkloric Dance Festival. It was held in January each year, so it was the first big activity of the year. We would dress up; it was always a lot of fun. My father shared his love for film with me, and my mother was always playing music in the house, some of the more classic Latin American singers. So, I’ve always been immersed in this world.
But what really catapulted my exposure to a wide world of the talent of artists and artistic organizations was my working for a little company called American Airlines (ha!). With them, I had an opportunity to visit many places. I always sought out opportunities to visit museums, which was always my thing.
Fast forward to about 20 years ago, I started doing fundraising activities for nonprofit organizations which led to the opportunity to become the leader of my company’s corporate foundation, providing grants and corporate gifts to organizations, and to create global corporate volunteer programs and workplace giving programs that provided employees the opportunity to get involved, to reward the organizations they were supporting, and to get rewarded themselves for the work that they were doing.
This led me to get involved with the Leadership Arts Institute program, and this is relevant because this is how I met Megan Heber— we’re both alumni of the Business Council for the Arts program—I became chair of the Arts and Culture Advisory Commission for the City of Dallas. I was working with the City of Dallas and the Office of Arts and Culture to promote arts and culture and an ecosystem that could make that segment of our community thrive. And then the pandemic happened.
I reconnected with Megan about a year ago, and we started talking about the program. I asked her if they had already visited Mexico, where I currently live. And she said, ‘No, not yet.’ I said, ‘What? What do you mean you haven’t visited? You go to Italy and Colombia and Canada, and you don’t come to the arts and culture hub of Latin America?’ So, we started to think about how we can make this happen. In the meantime, she decided to invite me to the project in Italy. Last summer, I went to the Castello Potentino in Italy and got to work with the cohort that was finishing up their degree that year.
Let’s back up a moment. What took you to Mexico?
I visited Mexico for work for the first time a little more than 25 years ago, but I’ve been living here for almost four years. I worked for American Airlines, developing staff and trainers in the Caribbean and Latin America. And I fell in love with the country right away; its music, its people.
Mexico [City] is second to London, if I’m not mistaken, as the city with the most artistic or cultural institutions. It’s amazing, everywhere you go, there is some sort of temple or shrine, as I like to call it, celebrating culture. That’s one of the things that really drew me to Mexico initially. Eventually, I would meet my husband, and we decided that I would move there.
Here, I’m in the entertainment business. We have artists who are signed to our label, some pop artists and pop Mexican music, and more traditional Mexican regional music as well. So in its own little way, today I have the privilege of contributing to the arts and culture scene in Mexico.
Credit: Samuel’s Personal Archive.
Tell me a little bit about what that’s like. What are you working on? What are you excited about?
Absolutely. So, we do a few different things. We have artists signed to our label, and that means that we accompany them on their entire—if you want to put it this way— journey. From songwriting and production to costuming to events.
Obviously, we sell their talent, so we put on concerts, festivals, and music conventions. We’ve done a little bit of everything all over the country, including the first-ever diversity and inclusion musical festival for the Costa Alegre, a section on the Pacific coast south of Puerto Vallarta, and right before getting to Manzanillo. A lot of people know Puerto Vallarta; they don’t know Manzanillo. It’s not a tourist destination, but that entire region is absolutely beautiful and undeveloped, which inspires a lot of this art.
There’s an area of Costa Alegre called Careyes, and the likes of Rihanna and Madonna have owned property there or have been frequent visitors. So they have nurtured a little bit of the artistic and cultural movement in the area. And more recently, the Four Seasons opened one of its most recent properties there, the Four Seasons Tamarindo. This is not a commercial for them; this is just to give you an idea of what’s going on in the area. There is an influx of high-end, high-net-worth foreigners and visitors, who have supported what’s going on in this area. We’re excited to be part of that and to support that through the events and the talent that we bring to all of these events.
We also participate in another business venture, Tequila Mil Demonios—an artisanal tequila— which is also culture, right? And it’s an amazing product that used to be a private label, and under my presidency, we had the opportunity to commercialize it. So it’s now on shelves in department stores here in Mexico and on Mercado Libre, which is similar to Amazon, and of course, Amazon Mexico.
You have your hands in a lot of seemingly diverse ventures. How do they each connect? How does it all come together for you?
That’s a good question because, you’re right, seemingly they’re not connected. But, there is one last venture that I haven’t mentioned yet. We’re launching an International Association of Boutique Hotels, a global community of boutique hotel owners, operators, investors, and providers.
So, there’s the entertainment piece and the spirits piece and then the events piece, but it’s all connected to this idea of creating communities and audiences and markets that bring people together around experiences that go hand in hand. A lot of people travel for entertainment, even if it’s local, then they have to invest in food and drinks, and you know, they need a place to stay.
Credit: Samuel’s Personal Archive.
I feel like when you stay at a boutique hotel, you combine the best of what people like about Airbnb with the best of what people like about a hotel. People want to get in touch with local experiences and what makes a place special. So, I think that’s awesome.
You got that right. These things take time, but we’re trying to create a global community of individuals who really appreciate culture. Boutique hotels in general tend to provide a very different, very localized experience.
So, for example, maybe a property is all about design and architecture, and they have a very specific design that speaks specifically to that region. Maybe the building is historical, and the hotel is not only preserving the building, but also opening it to the public in a creative way. Maybe they have a little art gallery on their property, or through their restaurant services, they represent the local gastronomy. There are a number of different things that boutique hotels do that really make a difference, and the way we’re thinking about these things brings it all together.
Is there one specific thing you’ve done this year that you feel really proud of or excited about, something that you want to shout from the rooftops that you’ve accomplished this year?
I’m very proud of being in the role that I’m fulfilling now, to take the risks that I’ve taken over the last four years. It is not easy to be an entrepreneur. You have the good times and the not so good times. And nobody’s going to bail you out. As an entrepreneur, you do what you feel you need to do or what you think you need to do, and hopefully, you have informed and educated yourself to the best of your abilities. But many times, you have no idea if it’s going to work out. That is a very scary, unstable place to be. And as a Taurus, we love stability. We don’t like to be, you know, flailing in the wind. But that’s exactly what I’ve been going through for the last four years.
I feel privileged that in the really good times, I’ve had the opportunity to do things that I would have never had the opportunity to do before. But even when the times are not as good, as happens with any company, I’ve also been able to have the liberty to say, ‘This is the work I am going to support.’ So, for example, there is an LGBTQ scholarship organization in California that put out a call for volunteers to review applications for scholarships. And while no, I wasn’t able to make a massive financial contribution at that moment, I could contribute by reviewing applications and helping them go through the process of selecting their scholars. Sometimes we have, you know, all the money in the world, and that’s great, but even when you don’t, it doesn’t mean that you have nothing to give. That’s one of the things I feel very, very proud of.
And of course, I have to go back to MMIAM, right, and being able to work with Megan and François and this amazing program. Being able to see and experience it, living with the students for a week, traveling with them, running around like crazy because the trains were late in Italy… What a joy to see these young people who are going to do great things, you know, for society, and this is how they’re preparing for it.
That’s great! Is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you want to talk about?
I would like to share some very specific messages.
Number one, I want to talk to funding organizations, I want to talk to government authorities, and I want to talk to individuals of high net worth who have the means: please invest in the arts.
Artnet just published a report showing a drop of 8.8 percent in fine art sales at auction in the first half of the year compared with the same period last year. The drop in decorative art sales at auction in the first half of the year compared with the same time period last year was 29.5 percent. The dip in total sales generated by the big three auction houses, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips, in the first half of 2025, was nine percent, and a 43.4 percent decline in revenue generated by artworks that sold for more than 10 million at auction. So, we’re seeing a really negative trend.
And then if you do the research in the Giving USA report, it says that while there was an increase in corporate giving, high net worth individual giving, and then just regular people giving, the arts and culture segment experienced the most negative drop in numbers in terms of donations and funding compared to last year. We need to talk about this a lot more, and we need to arm ourselves with these numbers, so we can have these conversations with these individuals who have the pockets to step in and invest in the arts.
Number two, to arts administrators and arts managers, don’t give up. I know it’s easy to feel jaded. But I’ve had the privilege of working with some amazing art administrators who have done some outstanding work. Let’s make sure that we keep up that work, and please, please, please support your artists.
Number three, to artists, thank you. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for the sacrifices that you make, because you’re following your heart, you’re following your passion, and you’re making our lives—and I say this from a very personal perspective—much better. And when things are a little dire, you’re there to give to us, to lift our spirits. And when things are great and we want to celebrate and have a good time, you’re there too. We’re very grateful for what you do as an artist, so please keep it up.
NOTE: Since the recording of this interview Sam has been working on the launch of Artistic Directors International (ADI) with business partner Melissa Young, acclaimed dancer and former Artistic Director at Black Dance Theatre. ADI aims to be the only organization in the world exclusively dedicated to supporting the professional and leadership development path of artistic directors worldwide.
*Samuel Santiago’s headshot credit: Fabian Torres.