When Sam was a little boy, he had a passion for small things - so when his mom made him a dollhouse as a gift, he was enthralled. Together, they created furniture, landscaping, decorations, and a rich life for the dollhouse's inhabitants, which were mice and bears (no regular humans allowed). They even entered competitions, which Sam won three years in a row at the ages of eight, nine, and ten years old.

Later, on the basis of his love of design and the influence of his grandfather, a respected architect, Sam decided to get a Master's degree in architecture. But his expectations for what being an architect meant and felt like - which were based on his grandfather's experience as the Harvard Graduate School of Design in a heady, modernist, post-war environment - didn't match up to the reality.

"I wanted to be someone interested in and capable of changing the world," Sam said. He found that a much more complicated goal than he originally thought.