Sam has worked with herbs since 1987 and formally as a clinical herbalist for over 15 years. He served in the military for 10 years of which 6 were as a US Special Forces Medic (aka Green Beret Medic). He is a registered herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild, a Wilderness EMT (WEMT), and a Wilderness First Responder instructor.

Sam is the founder of The Human Path/Herbal Medics Academy and co-founder of Herbal Medics which is the school's outreach organization that works with underserved communities.

His primary goal has become the creation of an integrative medical model that embraces both vitalistic and mechanistic aspects of herbalism into a collaboration with orthodox and energetic models of diagnosis and treatment, to include orthodox western medicine. To this end, he has created and co-created nearly 2000 hours of pathophysiology-based herbal medicine curriculum, and led hundreds of herbal clinics in remote, austere, post-disaster and underserved areas. Also as part of integrating orthodox medicine with plant medicine, Sam regularly works as an herbalist with, teaches with and instructs doctors, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, nurses, and other licensed health care practitioners.