Mx. Sam K Pearl is a community organizer, midwesterner, proud dad, and lifelong Unitarian Universalist. Sam joined PWR as a Congregational Life Consultant in Fall 2024. They have been to many UU congregations throughout the Heartland/MidAmerica Region, served in leadership roles as a youth and young adult, and was first called a ‘leader’ at UU Beloit Leadership Training summer camp. This faith community was the first affirmational space for many of their held identities. They have experience across interfaith social justice, movement work with traumatized/impacted communities, youth led mass protests, fights to reform immigration, defund the police, fund public education, secure safe housing for all people, and climate catastrophe planning for resilient communities.

Sam graduated from Oberlin College in 2016 with a degree in Environmental Studies. They remain a lifelong student of ecology and resiliency strategies of frontline climate catastrophe communities. They value the placemaking practices of marginalized communities with the land(s) around them. Sam spent time as a farmer, garden educator, and land steward in urban food systems, learning from the lives and writings of Fannie Lou Hamer, Baba Malik Yakini, Leah Penniman, and many other revolutionary leaders. During this period, Sam co-founded a women’s community garden within a county jail and practiced prison lay chaplaincy.

Sam spent a decade in the worlds of community organizing and educational nonprofits. During this tenure they held many roles, notably serving as an interfaith organizer, facilitator, mentor, mass action architect, and Operations staffer. In 2018, 2020, and 2022 they led statewide voter education campaigns for 18 — 35 year olds. They have held leadership and frontline positions in movements to Defund the Police, Divest from Fossil Fuels and Israel, secure safe housing for all, and protect voting rights. They were a faith leader in a secular coalition that successfully shut down an immigrant detention center in northern Michigan. Additionally, through interfaith organizing they have supported the creation of two sanctuary congregations. Sam credits the Our Whole Lives curriculum with their lifelong commitment to reproductive justice and is a trained abortion doula through the Spiral Collective.

They enjoy hiking, playing tabletop games, listening to and making podcasts, and LGBTQIA+ comedians. Sam currently lives in Michigamii (Anishinaabemowin) / Michigan (English) with their 15 year old son and 8 year old dog. They are in the process of relocating to xučyun (Chochenyo) / Oakland (English) and cannot wait to attend WNBA Valkyrie games. Sam describes themself as a ‘fairly devout’ Unitarian Universalist and enjoys hiking and reading tarot as spiritual practices.