Sam Gibbs

Deputy Secretary for Technology and Operations, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services

Contact Information

    After a successful career as an executive in several high-tech companies, Sam Gibbs developed an interest in public policy. He took classes at the graduate school of Public Affairs at Western Carolina University, and chose to transfer to the University of North Carolina at Asheville’s MLAS program in pursuit of “a master’s program that allowed me to craft a concentration that suited my interests.”

    Sam took advantage of the program’s flexibility to concentrate courses in his area of interest and writing his thesis in public policy while receiving a “quality liberal arts and sciences education.” Armed with new knowledge, skills and a Master’s degree, he secured an appointed position in North Carolina state government as a Deputy Secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services.

    Sam praises the MLAS program as “a tremendous opportunity to expand your educational horizons at the Master’s level at North Carolina’s premier liberal arts university.”

    An eighth-generation North Carolinian who earned his pilot’s license at age seventeen, Sam enjoys traveling throughout the state, hiking in the western mountains and boating on the Outer Banks.

    Sam is married and with his wife Cynthia has two daughters and a son and daughter-in-law.