About Sam Waltz
Sam Waltz, a Vietnam-era Veteran of U.S. Army Counterintelligence 1967-70 and a former DuPont Company strategic corporate development executive 1977-93, serves as the new CEO and Managing Director of the International Platform Association (IPA), succeeding his longtime friend and colleague of more than thirty years, Mitchell Davis, founder of ExpertClick, who has retired, who had acquired the IPA in 2010.
A nationally recognized, award-winning 1999 president and CEO of PRSA.org, the global professional society for corporate development, strategic communications, public affairs, and crisis management (akin to a local MD elected to head the AMA nationally), Mr. Waltz brings to the IPA a lifetime of leadership devoted to “helping leaders and organizations navigate difficult events, times, people, and issues to achieve their goals™“, his job description trademarked decades ago.
He now brings that same strategic acumen and faith-anchored optimism to revitalize the International Platform Association — a fellowship of credible voices devoted to liberty, civil discourse, and the common good.
Early Life & Education
A native of a rural downstate Illinois sharecropper’s farm, Mr. Waltz has lived in Delaware for the past fifty years (1975–2025), where he is a neighbor of former U.S. President Joseph R. Biden Jr., with whom he has worked across that half century. His Waltz family dates to the 1790s in the lower Midwest’s Ohio and Wabash River valleys, and his maternal Davis family to the 1600s in southern Appalachia, where the Great Smoky Mountains meet the Blue Ridge at Cumberland Gap, Virginia, and a Davis ancestor was a Chaplain in the Revolutionary War.
Mr. Waltz holds BS ’71 and MS ‘73 degrees from the University of Illinois, where he also taught Public Affairs Journalism 1972-75. He did PhD coursework (no degree) in Public Affairs and Public Policy 1975-79 at the University of Delaware, where he also taught as an adjunct both Public Affairs (in Communications) and Organization Development (in Business & Economics) from 1989 through the early 2010s. He’s also taught adjunct for Drexel University.
Journalism & Public Service
Mr. Waltz’s early career in journalism spanned local government and political reporting. After covering news and politics for the Champaign-Urbana Courier before and after his US Army service, the Delaware News Journal recruited him in 1975 to cover politics, where he became its last State Capitol Bureau Chief 1975-77. He covered Delaware politics, elections, the governor, the General Assembly, and a then-young U.S. Senator Joe Biden. He traveled statewide and one-on-one with then-Governor Jimmy Carter in November 1975—exactly one year before Carter’s November 1976 election as President.
Corporate Leadership at DuPont
Recruited to DuPont in 1977, Mr. Waltz led corporate development, strategic communications, and public affairs for a range of businesses in health care and medical products, agriculture and nutrition, polymers, and more. Among other achievements, he helped produce the halftime show of Super Bowl XIV (1980, Rose Bowl, Pasadena) and helped create and launch the American counterpart to the Tour de France—the Tour DuPont International Cycling Road Race (1990–96).
He wrote speeches for two DuPont vice presidents who later became CEOs, and a third who became a governor of Delaware. In 1988, he met in the White House with President-elect George H. W. Bush as part of an agricultural policy forum, later leading DuPont’s corporate press office / reputation management operations through the early 1990s.
As DuPont began its era of global restructuring—from about 180,000 employees in the 1980s to about 20,000 today—he took “early out” retirement in 1993 to launch his own consultancy.
Entrepreneurship & Consulting
On October 1, 1993, he founded SamWaltz.com Strategic Capital & Business Counsel, later expanding into multiple entrepreneurial ventures. Cornerstones of his Corporate Development Services were – and are – in:
- Strategic Business & Organizational Advisory, Planning & Problem-Solving;
- Strategic Capital Services, both Debt & Equity Capital, and ESOP formation;
- 9-1-1 Issues & Crisis Management, as well as Contingency Audit Risk Identification;
- Branding, Positioning, Marketing, and Business Development.
After serving nearly a decade on the Board of Directors of CECON.com Science, Engineering & Technical Experts, founded in 1985 out of DuPont, Mr. Waltz acquired the firm in April 2019 as its founders retired. He rebranded it as Expert-Nation.com Global Expert Network, now one of the world’s oldest and largest subject-matter-expert companies, with more than 1,500 SMEs across all 50 states and 20 countries.
He also co-founded WorldTradePartners.io Global Corporate Development, which fosters strategic alliances and deal partnerships between the U.S. and Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. His background in international trade dates to his DuPont career, when he was among the first American businessmen to visit China in 1985 after its economic opening.
In 2014–15, he took a sabbatical to serve as the Founding Publisher of the Delaware Business Times, the state’s leading business publication, which thrives today under Today Media Inc., owned by a close friend.
Faith, Family & Community Leadership
Long active in civic, professional, and faith leadership, Mr. Waltz served as a national officer of PRSA in the late 1990s, culminating in his election as CEO, President, and Board Chair in 1999. In that role, he spoke in 35 states and three countries, including a meeting at Buckingham Palace in 2000 with a senior advisor to Queen Elizabeth II. Accredited by PRSA in 1991 and elected a Fellow PRSA in 1995, he was the first-ever Fellow to lead the national society.
In 2000, PRSA awarded him its highest honor—the Silver Anvil for Public Affairs—for his 1998-2000 Campaign to Vindicate the Scapegoated 1941 Pearl Harbor Commanders Adm. Husband Kimmel and Gen. Walter Short, a campaign for which his friend and neighbor Senator Joe Biden “ran point” in Congress that changed World War II history through three congressional votes.
In the Faith community, Mr. Waltz today serves as Chaplain of two leading Delaware veterans organizations, one the www.DelawareMemorialDayParade.com, the oldest continuous Memorial Day remembrance in America, and the other www.DelVets.com Post #1, founded in 1948 by returning WWII veterans.
Raised in his mother’s Southern Baptist tradition, Mr. Waltz self-describes as ‘country Baptist,’ but notes that he’s “the only Baptist you’ll meet who has his own Rabbi,” emphasizing that “Faith should NOT be a ‘mine is better than yours’ competition,” and that all Faiths should be respected. He embraces the Old Testament Hebrew ethic Tikkun Olam — “repairing the world” — as his personal legacy.
In 2010, he emceed the Little Sisters of the Poor of Delaware awards dinner as its Board Chair, joking that he was “the Sisters’ token Protestant,” sharing the stage with three Catholic bishops, including one who now serves the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Long Island.
Touching lives through volunteer service, via some 50 organizations over 50 years, Mr. Waltz has been honored by a number of Delaware non-profits for his leadership and service. Among them, the American Cancer Society honored him in the mid-1990s with its Capitol Dome award for his leadership in eliminating tobacco vending machines where children could buy cigarettes unsupervised. He was honored by the March of Dimes for his “Cradle of Hope” program that led to the creation of Delaware’s Perinatal Board early in the 1990s.
The Lincoln Club of Delaware, one of America’s oldest, largest and most prestigious Lincoln Clubs, founded in 1929, honored him in 2025 with its Lincoln Gold Medal for his service in helping steward and run the club the last 25 years, only the second time in a century the award has been presented.
His Rotary Club of Wilmington (DE), Delaware’s oldest and largest Rotary, honored him in 2022 with its John F. Newnam Award for lifetime Civic Leadership. He’s served also some 30 years – 2012-25 as its Board co-chair – on the Board of the Delaware Safety Council, one of America’s oldest safety councils, and more than 30 years on the University of Delaware Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship, where he’s its longest-serving Board member.
He has three adult children in their 40s, with an 8-year old grandson in San Diego, with his parents, and a 7-year old grandson (the one he says ‘with two mommies’) in RTP / Raleigh-Durham, with his parents. His wife Sandra has a background in clinical medicine, who spent her career in pharmaceutical regulatory affairs, an industry in which she still consults.