Samara Davis Makes It All Possible

Samara Davis has wielded her influence and expertise from bourbon tastings to boardrooms. She’s coached major corporations in fostering more inclusive work environments, mentored Black startup founders, and guided spirits brands in having more genuine conversations with their Black consumers. But before all of that, she was an art history major who almost got in serious trouble for wallpapering her dorm room in Absolut ads.

“My roommate thought that I was underage drinking,” Davis says with a chuckle. “But it was art. It didn’t matter if you drank Absolut or not, it was iconic. It was pop culture.”

Fortunately, Davis didn’t get kicked out of undergrad. She went on to get her master’s in arts administration (and, later, to develop a taste for bourbon over vodka). When she made her way in San Francisco as a curator and event planner, a career in spirits was the furthest thing from her mind.

She launched the Black Bourbon Society to … show brands that Black consumers couldn’t be ignored.

That changed in 2016 when Davis, at the time a budding bourbon drinker, became perplexed and dismayed by the way whiskey brands were being marketed to Black drinkers (if they did so at all). She launched the Black Bourbon Society to unite fellow bourbon connoisseurs who believed in diversity and inclusion—and to show brands that Black consumers couldn’t be ignored.

“Samara began her venture into the spirits industry as a consumer who didn’t understand why companies—who had primarily Black demographics supporting their products—weren’t marketing to Black people,” says Jackie Summers, founder of Sorel Liqueur and a self-described compatriot of Davis. “And she took the initiative to say, ‘If y’all want my money, you better learn how to speak to me.'”

Now 30,000 members strong (including 2,500 premium members who get first dibs on barrel picks and other perks), the Black Bourbon Society is an international community of bourbon drinkers that brands can’t afford to ignore. Since its founding, the Society, which tripled in size during the pandemic, has organized tastings, meetups, and even barrel picks—in 2018, their very first Maker’s Mark barrel went on to win double gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition (and today is the most beloved bottle in Davis’ personal bourbon collection). And like the Society itself, the group’s biggest annual event has grown tremendously over the years, too. Bourbon Boule, which started out as a meetup in New Orleans, now brings a couple hundred bourbon enthusiasts together in Louisville for four days of tastings, distillery tours, branded dinners with cocktail pairings, and more.

As Black Bourbon Society grew, Davis saw another opportunity to push the industry forward: this time, by working within the brands themselves. The idea first took root in early 2020 but crystallized that summer, after the tragic killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd sparked tough questions about inequity across the industry. She and her team launched Diversity Distilled, a DEI consulting agency tailored to spirits brands, that June.

Through Diversity Distilled, Davis and her team consult with liquor brands on cultivating diversity and inclusion within their own organizations. Recently, Davis helped one large brand address their failure to retain employees of color: The company simply didn’t have enough opportunities for their Black employees to advance in their careers, and after just a few years of working in the organization, this talent was typically leaving the company (or even the industry altogether) in order to move up. “So, it was really looking at that and saying, ‘Where are the pathways for leadership? Where are the opportunities to take this diverse talent?'” says Davis. “Especially in the spirits industry, there’s such great talent that gets stuck at the bottom. So how do we open those doors?” (Since then, she adds, the brand has majorly restructured in order to better serve these employees.)

It’s deeply rewarding to spearhead tangible changes like these at the biggest, most established industry organizations. But for Davis, some of the most thrilling work she does happens on a much smaller scale.

“Samara gave us some insight about how we could approach the market, and gave us her audience, as a very young brand.”—Kweillin Gordon

Kweillin Gordon, co-founder of Atlanta-based Greenwood Whiskey, first connected with Davis after their launch in November 2020, an encounter he describes as pivotal. “Samara gave us some insight about how we could approach the market, and gave us her audience, as a very young brand,” says Gordon. Davis facilitated a virtual Greenwood Whiskey tasting for Black Bourbon Society members; the tasting not only introduced the audience to the brand, but also provided invaluable feedback that ultimately even resulted in some tweaks to the recipe.

Davis scaled that mentorship model when she launched Diversity Distilled’s Black-Owned Spirits Scholarship (BOSS), a six-month incubator program in which she and her team coach founders and guide them along the path of bringing a product to market. “It’s continuing to expand the community, but helping us to embrace these new founders and really give them the resources they need to survive,” Davis says.

For some startup brands, that might look like improving their distribution or identifying the best sourcing partner.

For Gordon, who joined the program in 2023, Davis’ industry expertise proved crucial for a newcomer to the field (Gordon’s background is in financial services and real estate). “We made a bunch of mistakes,” he says, “but we would’ve made a bunch more without Samara.” Elevating Black-owned brands is one thing, but a seat at the table only goes so far, says Gordon. “It’s providing the proper tools so that when we do come to the table, we can succeed in a major way.”

Though Davis took an unconventional path into the spirits industry, she sees a clear line from where she started to where she is now. Studying art, Davis says, gave her “a sense for understanding culture and understanding people, how people work, and how people are motivated,” she says. And that propelled her into her most recent endeavor, Society Marketing Group, the agency she launched in 2022 to meet a surge in demand from spirits brands asking her to execute multi-city events and campaigns.

She sees the agency work as an opportunity to push back against the old, stereotypical ways of spirits marketing and create something better, and more genuine, in its place. “I think the old way of marketing was like, ‘Okay, this is what women want. Let’s make something sweet and pink. And Black people want this. Let’s give the bottle to a rapper.’ It’s so stereotypical and offensive, not realizing that we’re all human and want the same things out of life,” she says. “So how do we completely disrupt it? How do we completely flip it on its head in order to make genuine, conscious connection opportunities?”

“I believe that because [Samara’s] independent; she’s beholden to nothing but her own conscience.”—Jackie Summers

Through her work, Davis has touched the spirits industry at practically every level, from helping Black consumers deepen their knowledge of the spirit to guiding the biggest brands in having a more genuine connection with those same consumers. “I think Samara plays an essential role in the community, and I believe that because she’s independent; she’s beholden to nothing but her own conscience,” says Summers. “She can do things that a lot of the people who would like to have a greater say in things cannot. She is free of the golden handcuffs that bind many of the important people of color in our industry.”

Since Davis first embarked on her work in the spirits industry, she’s witnessed and played a role in remarkable progress: more Black-owned brands rising to the top, more Black talent stepping into leadership roles, and more influential industry names taking steps to acknowledge a complex history. (Davis mentions Heaven Hill’s endeavor to research the legacy of enslaved people’s contributions to the bourbon industry as one example.) “We’ve seen brands that have made gaffes over the years,” she acknowledges. “But by connecting with us and then building this rapport, and having genuine, honest conversations, we can actually get some progress done here.”

As for what that progress might look like next? “The work is never done,” Davis tells me over Paper Planes at a hotel bar in Atlanta, where she’s lived with her family since 2019. But the shape of that work may change.

“I would love to do this for a couple of years and pass the torch,” she says. “There’s a whole community of African American spirits professionals that are coming into this space. And I want to be able to just plug and play where I need to.” She might write a book, she might become a motivational speaker, she might try to do for other industries what she’s done for spirits. “My favorite saying is ‘all possibilities are possible,'” she says. “So I’m open to the possibilities.”