Sam Diss (b. 1991) is a strategist and writer, born (and based) in East London. He mostly works in football and is a long-suffering West Ham fan.

You can email me (dropping the talking about myself in third-person thing now, don’t worry) at alright[at]samdiss[dot]com.

Anyway, for over a decade, I’ve helped brands and organisations in sport and culture understand what matters to the people around them and turn that understanding into strategy, stories, and creative work.

I think “I tell stories” is a bit glib, but also too far downstream to describe the work I usually do. It sorta makes “the story” sound like the whole job, when I’m often there before anyone even knows what the story act is.

My job is to research, listen, make sense of what’s happening, interview people inside and outside the project, find the tension or distinction that matters, then turn it into a point of view people can use: a strategy, a platform, a brief, a set of stories, or creative ideas. Then I stay close enough to the work to help that thinking become real or until someone taps me politely on the shoulder and says, “Don’t worry, mate. We’ll take it from here.”

You can see my portfolio here.

As a writer, I’ll occasionally interview the world’s best football players for GQ or make David Beckham cry or work directly with athletes to tell their life story at a key time in their storied career or maybe I’ll go and write something like The English Disease, an award-winning audio documentary series about the lasting legacy of football hooliganism on the British psyche. Depends on the day, really.

For books, my agent is Imogen Pelham @ Marjacq. For film and TV, it’s Leah Middleton, also @ Marjacq.