Samuel Kotis is currently the chief groundskeeper, cook, cleaner, and dog walker at his and his wife Beth’s bucolic and architecturally interesting mid-century home in the back woods of Wellfleet, MA. Among Sam’s recent accomplishments have been chain-sawing upwards of 20 felled trees into logs suitable for splitting into firewood (and then splitting said logs into firewood for the family hearth), providing general oversight to a long overdue 6-month home renovation project, and providing invigorating daily beach walks to their endlessly energetic 1-1/2 year-old Hungarian Vizsla.
Prior to his current responsibilities, Sam was a career Foreign Service Officer with the US Department of State and served at diplomatic posts around the world including Jakarta, Singapore, Washington DC, Tunis, Amman, the US Mission to the UN in New York, Budapest, Baghdad, London, New Delhi and the US Mission to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Montreal. Sam was the recipient of a number of awards during his diplomatic career, including the Department of State’s 2015 Frank E. Loy Award for Environmental Diplomacy and the American Foreign Service Association’s 2015 William R. Rivkin Award for Constructive Dissent, both for his work in India fostering bilateral cooperation to combat air pollution. Following his career at the State Department, Sam was the Associate Vice President for Global Energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, responsible for developing and implementing EDF’s international strategies for cutting oil and gas methane emissions and advancing the global transition to clean, low carbon energy future.
Sam has a BA in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He and Beth are the proud parents of their (now adult) children Sarah (who is successfully navigating a career related to social media that her father doesn’t fully understand) and Ben (an accomplished furniture maker who’s spatial reasoning skills make his father quite envious).