40 Under 40 2025: Sam Kim, FleishmanHillard

Sam Kim

Senior vice president
FleishmanHillard
South Korea

Sam Kim started at FleishmanHillard Korea in 2009 as an intern. Fifteen years later, she’s one of the office’s most trusted leaders, rising through seven promotions to become senior vice president in January 2025—one of the youngest to hold the role. Her journey reflects a relentless drive, sharp thinking, and a talent for delivering real impact for clients, colleagues, and the agency.

Her work spans high-profile national campaigns, like addressing Korea’s declining birth rate, to driving Samsung’s global CSR initiatives. Along the way, she’s led award-winning efforts, from a national anti-smoking campaign showcased at Cannes Lions 2017 to high-stakes corporate communications for clients across technology, automotive, and healthcare.

Kim leads one of FleishmanHillard’s biggest global tech clients, running round-the-clock communications across markets while driving major brand and CSR initiatives that have reached hundreds of millions. She’s also expanded the agency’s remit, cementing the account as a flagship for Korea and the region.

Her leadership is quietly powerful. Kim thrives in high-pressure, cross-border projects, keeping teams coordinated across time zones while delivering clarity, stability, and excellence. “Sam is the kind of leader everyone counts on—calm in chaos, clear in direction, quietly making things happen,” says Joyce Jeong, account director at FleishmanHillard Korea. 

Kim is also shaping the conversation around diversity, equity, and inclusion and translated FleishmanHillard’s global DE&I research into locally relevant strategies for South Korea, embedding representation and equity into client campaigns and internal initiatives such as Hyundai’s Red Helicopter leadership programme.

Since 2018, Kim has trained executives through the Korea CPO Forum on cybersecurity communications, helping companies translate technical risks into business narratives and build crisis-ready protocols. Her workshops, including a May 2025 session for the Korean chapter of the Global CEOs Association, demonstrate her rare ability to make technical complexity understandable and actionable.

From public health campaigns to corporate affairs, DEI advocacy to cyber crisis preparedness, she shows that communications is about messaging but also about guiding people, organisations, and society through complexity with insight, empathy, and precision.