America Walks is thrilled to welcome four new members of our Board of Directors, including Sam Foster, whose introduction is below. View the rest of our board and staff here.
Hi, I’m Sam Foster! I’ve been a local bike and pedestrian safety advocate in Marietta, Georgia, for the past few years. For most of my life, I had never really given the built environment around me much thought. Every place I went through was more or less the same in the back of my mind, especially given that most of my time was spent in a car. This changed when I moved to Marietta in 2019 to attend Kennesaw State University and started to experience the world on my own, and often outside of a car. As I took the bus and walked around, what I saw would plant the seeds for the advocacy I do today.
It was after I graduated college in 2022 that I got my first bike and fell in love with safe streets advocacy. Truly experiencing how unsafe it was to get around outside of a car in a lot of the places I lived made me want to do something about it and fight for change. I co-founded, A Better Cobb, a local nonprofit focused on bike and pedestrian safety, as well as housing affordability and public transit investment. I also host Marietta Bike Social, a weekly Saturday bike ride I’ve kept going for the past few years, to further advocate for safer streets and also to bring people together. In 2025, I launched a bid for mayor of Marietta against a four-term incumbent, earning 49.7% of the vote and falling just 87 votes short of winning. The following year, I launched Marietta Bike School, refurbishing and donating bicycles to community members, offering free basic repairs, and teaching people of all ages how to ride.
Using your own two legs to walk around shouldn’t put anyone at risk of losing their life. Pedestrian safety has been at the forefront of everything I do locally. We need investment at all levels of government into better infrastructure to make that a reality.
That’s why I’m excited to be joining America Walks as a board member to fight for better infrastructure not only where I live, but across the nation.
