Samara Barend

Samara "Sam" Barend is known for her work in funding mechanisms for infrastructure projects in public/private partnerships. She lead a 1996 campaign to bring a major highway to an isolated segment of New York State. In 2004 she was a Democratic nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Early life and education
Barend grew up in Vestal, New York and graduated from Vestal High School in 1995. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania with an individualized major in governing complex organizations (1999) Barend was a college student at the time and was an intern for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Corporate work on public/private partnerships
Barend works on public/private partnerships (P3) and how to use them to fund transportation and utilities projects. In 2008, Barend was appointed executive director of the New York State Asset Maximization Commission which was tasked to identify specific public private partnerships for the State. In this role her work using public/private partnerships to fund state projects was discussed in Euromoney in a 2010 article on how privatizing public infrastructure projects in the United States may reduce the country's deficit.
From 2010-2021 Barend served as Senior Vice President & National Public-Private Partnership Lead for AECOM & AECOM Capital. While in that role, she testified by the New York State Senate (in 2011) and before the United States' Senate Committee on Financial Services (2014) about the role of public-private partnerships in funding infrastructure projects. One topic she has addressed was Donald Trump's 2017 infrastructure bill and the role of private investments in public infrastructure.
As of 2022, Barend is chief executive officer of the company IDION.
Political work
Barend worked in Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign and as an aide to Hillary Clinton. She later worked as Statewide Neighborhood program director for Hillary Clinton's first US Senate campaign.
In 2004 she was the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives for the 29th Congressional district of New York State. At 26 years old, Barend would have been the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. Barend, who had never run for public office before, raised $627,952 in her contest against Randy Kuhl, a Republican state senator who served in the NY State Assembly and Senate for more than 25 years. Barend was a featured candidate in several major Internet sources including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's blog, The Stakeholder and on the website of ActBlue, the non-profit "527" political committee that supports Democratic candidates. During the campaign Kuhl's divorce papers were released, and the campaign became "one of the nastiest House races in 2004".Towards the end of the campaign Barend demoted her campaign manager because of his actions in releasing the divorce papers. She lost with 41 percent of the vote against Conservative Mark Assini and the winner, Republican Randy Kuhl, in the race to succeed retiring Republican Congressman Amo Houghton.
Following the campaign multiple sources used the Barend/Kuhl campaign to evaluate the role of gender in American politics, including David Mark's 2007 book Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning, and Tanya Melich's article in Heidi Hartmann's 2014 edited book Gendering Politics and Policy. and she received the Althea K. Hottel Award from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2009 Barend was honored as an Outstanding Women in the Building Industry by the Women Builders Council, an association that supports women in the construction industry. In 2015, Barend was named to the Vestal Central School District Hall of Fame. In 2016 Barend was a nominee for the Overall P3 Champion Award Barend was a 2017 Bond Buyer Rising Star. In 2018 Barend received an award during the City & State's 2018 P3 Summit

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