I'm Sam Slater.
I help people figure out how their work should work.
Former Google Global Workplace Design Lead. Design thinker. Founder of The Clarity Clinic. San Diego, CA.
"Sam brings strategic vision and practical execution in the same package — and he's willing to get hands-on to make sure plans actually translate into tangible results."
Josh Glynn, VP Real Estate & Workplace Services, Salesforce
I started my career as an architect. I was in love with buildings, but I was also obsessed with people and a simple question: what makes some people thrive together, while others don't?
I spent my early years designing corporate offices and retail spaces in San Francisco. The work was hard and interesting. But I kept running into the same wall: a beautifully designed space would open, and nothing would change. The teams struggled with getting their work done. The culture wasn't shifting. I realized that architecture alone is only one part of the answer. Space without the right operational model, the right technology, and the right human understanding behind it is just furniture.
That realization led me to Google. For ten years, I worked inside one of the most complex workplaces on earth — first as a Design Strategist developing solutions for the Office of the CEO and CFO, then as Global Workplace Design Lead, responsible for the design standards and innovation pipeline for Google's global portfolio. I ran projects with $50M budgets. I led cross-functional teams spanning design, engineering, HR, and real estate. I learned how to get 40,000 meeting rooms to work better. And I learned how to take a messy problem where everyone disagrees on the question before they've even started debating the answer, and get it to a place where a team could actually move.
Then, in March 2025, Google laid me off. Along with 10,000 other people in a single round.
It wasn't the plan. But as it turned out, it was the right moment. Because it put me in a world with a very different kind of person: San Diego small business owners; entrepreneurs, startup founders, solopreneurs, service providers, people building something meaningful on their own. And I found they were wrestling with exactly the same fundamental question I'd spent a decade inside Google trying to answer — just at a completely different scale. Too many priorities; not enough clarity; a gap between where they were and where they wanted to go, with no structured way to get there.
So I started The Clarity Clinic. A small-group, in-person workshop in San Diego where I take everything I learned at Google — the structured thinking, the problem-framing techniques, the Google Venture design sprint methodology I was trained in — and I strip it of the jargon, the MBA language, and the corporate babble. Because I've always believed that the best ideas are simple. The best methods are accessible.
At the same time, I'm building an external practice in workplace strategy — bringing the same approach to companies navigating the genuinely hard questions about how, where and when their people should work, and what kind of cultural environment is worth coming in for. My time at Google taught me to answer that question. I know what the right answer looks like, and I know what it takes to get a leadership team aligned around it.
“The Clarity Clinic name is perfect because I literally walked away with clarity about it all. I went in with a general idea of what I had going with my business but didn't know how it interfaced with my clients, what direction to take it, and I definitely didn't have a gameplan. I came away with a strategy. I've developed upon it all over the past few months, and I couldn't have done it without Sam and the Clarity Clinic.”
Taylor Gallegas, Muralist
"This workshop not only gave me clarity but it energized me. I have taken many business workshops and classes that give great information but leave me feeling overwhelmed and disempowered. It felt like the perfect blend of support and trusting myself."
Masha Kamenetskaya, Nervous System Coach
How I think about this work.
Most strategy work starts with the answer. Someone in the room — usually the most senior person — has already decided what needs to happen, and the process exists to validate that decision. I don't work that way.
I start with the problem. Not the assumed problem — the real one. Half the time, the thing a team thinks they're solving is just a symptom of the thing that actually needs solving. Getting that right is the most important work I do, and it's the work most engagements skip.
I also believe that if a strategy can't be executed, it isn't a strategy — it's just an idea. My work is measured by what changes, not what gets delivered. That's true whether I'm working with a VP of Real Estate at a growing company trying to figure out what their office should be for, or with a San Diego solopreneur who needs to stop running in circles and make a decision they can commit to.
Right Now.
Right now I run The Clarity Clinic in San Diego — a small-group, in-person strategy workshop for small business owners and solopreneurs, held monthly at Kiln in Rancho Bernardo. I've worked directly with dozens of local businesses across seven cohorts. I also take on longer-term consulting engagements for companies and organizations working through more complex operational, strategy or innovation challenges.
I'm based in San Diego because that's where my family is and because I've found that the small business community here has exactly the kind of generosity and ambition I want to be working with.
Outside of consulting, I make things. I maintain a fine art practice, I'm a production ceramicist, and I'm currently writing a children's book on environmental stewardship. I think making things with your hands keeps you honest about what actually works in the real world.
Occasionally I write. You can find those think pieces here.
For companies
If you're navigating hybrid work, a workplace redesign, or a culture shift — and you need someone who's solved these problems at serious scale, not just theorized about them.
What next?
For small business owners
If you're running a business under 10 people and you need to step back, and make a plan you can actually commit to — in one day, in San Diego, with two other business owners who get it.