Sam Herd has spent the last 21 years working in the event industry across a multitude of multi-sport, single sport, music and one-off events across the world.

Sam is currently the head of event planning and delivery at the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) , overseeing the six grass court tournaments across the month of June prior to the Wimbledon Championships. In this new role, she is looking to streamline and find better efficiencies across the planning and delivery of these very different tournaments across the country.
Previously Sam has worked on three Commonwealth Games, the most recent as the head of venue management at Birmingham 2022, where for more than two-and-a-half years she managed and grew the team to 130 paid staff to deliver the 14 permanent and temporary venues across the West Midlands and London. She acted as venue general manager for the Coolangatta Beach Volleyball venue in the Gold Coast in 2018 where she oversaw the design and delivery of the 4,000 temporary seat venue on the beach. Glasgow 2014 saw Sam plan and deliver five test events in preparation for the Commonwealth Games and also manage the delivery of the Opening Ceremony in Celtic Park.

Sam has also experienced living and working in Tokyo for 18 months whilst acting as deputy head of venue operations for the organising committee of the Rugby World Cup in 2019. The challenges of language and culture had to be overcome throughout to ensure that the team understood and prepared for the requirements of the international client groups. Sam was also involved in the England 2015 Rugby World Cup working for the RFU and managing the operations at Twickenham Stadium where ten matches including the final were played.
The London Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012 was a highlight with three years of planning the Olympic Park across multiple temporary build venues. Integrating the complexities of multiple build sites, understanding the operations of a new park, how spectators would flow and ensuring all different client’s needs were met were some of the many challenges. Management of Riverbank Arena, the 16,000 temporary seat hockey and Paralympic football venue was a great games time role.

Sam’s career started at Earls Court Exhibition Centre where she spent nearly 12 years working her way up through the company from a coordinator to conference manager and finally an event manager where she oversaw many exhibitions, new concept events, seated and standing concerts and was the lead point of contact for the Brit Awards for eight years.