A PROVEN TRACK RECORD
Sam Sokolow is a two-time Emmy Award-nominated television and film producer and a Professor of Practice at Clemson University.
Sam is an Executive Producer of GENIUS, a scripted series for National Geographic Network and Disney+. Sam developed GENIUS from book to series. The first season of GENIUS depicted the life of Albert Einstein with Geoffrey Rush starring as Einstein and Ron Howard directing the pilot. GENIUS: EINSTEIN garnered ten 2017 Emmy nominations including a Best Limited Series nomination for Sam. The second season of GENIUS - GENIUS: PICASSO - depicted the life of Pablo Picasso with Antonio Banderas starring as Picasso and garnered seven 2018 Emmy nominations including a Best Limited Series nomination for Sam. The third season of GENIUS – GENIUS: ARETHA - depicted the life of “The Queen Of Soul” Aretha Franklin, with Cynthia Erivo portraying Aretha and Suzan-Lori Parks showrunning and garnered three 2021 Emmy nominations. Season 4 of GENIUS – GENIUS MLK/X - depicted the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and premiered on ABC and Nat Geo on February 1st, 2024, and aired on Disney+ and Hulu the next night.
Sam is a teacher and a mentor. Sam is a Professor of Practice of film and television production at Clemson University, where he is charged with building the College of Arts & Humanities film production curriculum from scratch. Previously, Sam taught college and graduate level classes at the Boston University Los Angeles Program, a program he helped develop and build from it’s inception.
Sam's recent experiential learning course in June 2025 at Clemson University saw over 30 enrolled students do high-level hands-on crew and acting jobs on a project that mimicked a professional feature film shoot and resulted in an actual micro-budget feature film, STUDENT FILM: THE MOVIE, thus giving Clemson students their first credit on a feature film prior to graduating, a competitive advantage as they start their careers.
Sam’s classes at Clemson - “Filmmaking”, “Introduction To Documentary Production” and "Film: An Introduction" – and at BULA - “Careers in Hollywood” & “A Creative Life In Television” - give students real-world tools that they can use when seeking their first jobs in the entertainment industry and when rising through the industry. Sam has also guest lectured at universities such as UCLA, USC, Loyola Marymount, and The New School and has led education workshops for film commissions in Australia, Costa Rica, Croatia, South Africa, and across the US.
Sam also currently leads Sammy Nice Inc., a Los Angeles-New York City-Greenville-based independent television and film studio. At Sammy Nice Inc., Sam oversees all aspects of television & film development and physical production, including the acquisition and packaging of intellectual properties, script & format development, financing, sales, and full-service third-party production services in the US and abroad.
Prior, Sam served as a founder of Nice Media Studios, an independent studio based in Los Angeles and Toronto, the President of EUE/Sokolow, an independent television studio based in Los Angeles and New York, and a founding partner of SokoLobl Entertainment, an independent television production company based in Los Angeles. While leading these companies, Sam executive produced 19 original TV series, several of which he created, and set up dozens of television and film projects at every major studio and distributor in Hollywood, developing over 200 original television and film properties in the process.
From 2022-2024, Sam developed, built, and ran a global workforce development certification program with the world's largest online entertainment industry-focused community, Stage 32, that has over 1.2 million members worldwide. The Stage 32 Certification Program that Sam built has been utilized by film commissions across the US and from Europe to The Middle East to train film & TV production crew members on a local level for numerous production crew jobs as international physical production expands. Stage 32’s education partners include Netflix, the Cannes Film Festival, The American Film Market, Variety, dozens of film festivals, commissions, markets, and many more industry-leading entities.
In 1997, Sam co-wrote, produced, and directed the award-winning independent feature film THE DEFINITE MAYBE, starring Josh Lucas, Roy Scheider and Bob Balaban. In 1999, Sam became the first filmmaker to self-distribute his own feature film via the Internet, a groundbreaking digital distribution initiative that was featured on Good Morning America, Time Magazine, and other publications and film festivals.
From 1994-1997, Sam created and produced world-class advertising and marketing campaigns for agencies such as Wells Rich Green, Moss/Dragoti and Partners & Shevack.
From 1993-1994, Sam was a Metro & Crime Staff Reporter for the New York Daily News, covering all 5 boroughs of New York City.
SOME RECENT PRESS:
https://www.wspa.com/your-carolina/clemsons-first-feature-film-student-film-the-movie/
https://thetigercu.com/28909/spotlight/student-film-the-movie-premiere-new-era-clemson-world-cinema/
https://www.bu.edu/com/articles/sam-sokolow-com91-behind-national-geographics-genius/
https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/genius-nat-geo-eue-sokolow-1202395467/
