Samantha is a General Partner at Blackbird Ventures, a technology venture capital fund backing ambitious founders building global businesses. Originally operating only in Australia,. Blackbird was an early investor in some of the biggest Aussie startup successes – Canva, Zoox, Safety Culture and CultureAmp. Sam recently has led the Blackbird team to raise a $30M venture capital fund focussed on New Zealand founders as well as establish its first international office in Auckland.

Samantha originally trained as a lawyer and practiced in corporate and litigation teams at Minter Ellison in Sydney. Subsequent to law, she career-pivotted into technology, holding Product and Strategy roles at SurfStitch, a multi-national e-commerce business as well as founded a legaltech startup, CapacityHQ. She holds a BA/LLB from the University of New South Wales.

Samantha is passionate about diversity in technology and venture capital and spear-headed the release of the Model Code of Conduct for the Startup Community as well as a venture capital internship program for women.