Sam Bowden Akbari, Ph.D., serves as Director of Communications at Regional Plan Association (RPA), where she leads strategic communications, media relations, digital content, and public-facing messaging. An urban geographer and public affairs strategist, Sam works across RPA’s research and advocacy portfolio to advance the organization’s regional planning agenda.

Since joining RPA in 2024, Sam has helped shape RPA’s policy positioning and advocacy on some of the region’s most consequential planning debates, including congestion pricing, Penn Station, and the Gateway Program. She has authored and co-authored RPA research and policy analysis on congestion pricing and its legal challenges, New York City Charter reform, climate and infrastructure policy, and regional transit projects including the Interborough Express. Sam also hosts and co-produces RPA Radio, RPA’s podcast on the policies and ideas shaping the metropolitan region.

Sam brings more than 15 years of experience across government, nonprofit advocacy, higher education, political campaigns, and management consulting. Earlier in her career in Florida, she helped lead campaigns for regional high-speed rail and a countywide transit-funding referendum. She also worked in civil rights advocacy, electoral politics, and was named one of Florida’s ​“Top 30 Under 30 Rising Stars of Politics.” She later worked at Deloitte as a national consulting writer and at Rutgers University’s Voorhees Center for Civic Engagement.

A trained urban geographer, Sam’s research has appeared in prominent academic journals and the books The New Global Politics and Spatial Futures. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban Geography and Planning from Rutgers University, an M.A. in Political Science, and B.A.s in Geography and International Relations from the University of South Florida.

Sam lives in Astoria, Queens, with her wife, Dr. Maryam Akbari, and their daughter.