Samantha Campbell, Senior Director of Field Services at Brightstar Lottery and 2025 Stand Out 50 leader, joins Sarah Nicastro for a candid conversation about why mentorship is one of the most underutilized strategic tools in service leadership — and what it actually looks like to get it right.
Samantha Campbell is a military wife, mum of two boys under four, and Senior Director of Field Services at Brightstar Lottery — managing field service across EMEA, Latin America, and Asia Pacific for almost 90 customers globally. She has been with Brightstar for nearly twenty years.
She is also one of our 2025 Stand Out 50 leaders, recognized specifically for the role she has played in mentoring emerging talent. This episode is a conversation about what that means in practice — and why mentorship, done well, is one of the most powerful retention and development tools a service leader has.
The Difference Between a Mentor and a Sponsor
Samantha opens with a distinction that catches many leaders off guard: the difference between a mentor and a sponsor. For years, she referred to one of the most influential figures in her career as her mentor. It was only at a leadership training course — where she was asked to raise her hand if she had a sponsor, and didn’t — that she picked up a book called Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor and realized something important.
She already had one.
“I didn’t even realize I had a sponsor. He was advocating for me in a way I didn’t even know was happening until someone would come out of a room and say, ‘I’ve heard about you.’ He was giving me a seat at the table in meetings I shouldn’t necessarily have been in.” — Samantha Campbell
The distinction matters because it changes how people think about who is in their corner and how to cultivate those relationships. Mentors offer guidance and perspective. Sponsors use their influence to open doors, advocate when you’re not in the room, and put you forward for opportunities before you feel ready. Both matter — but they work differently, and too many people don’t realize the difference until after the fact.
Mentoring a CEO During a Pandemic
One of the most striking stories in this episode is the one Samantha almost glosses over: in 2020, she was asked if she would be interested in reverse mentoring her CEO at Brightstar.
Before thinking about it, she said yes.
The brief was to help the CEO better understand millennials and Generation Z and their changing expectations in the workplace. What emerged was far more significant: deep collaborative research, peer learning, and ultimately the creation of Next Gen — an employee impact group designed to ensure future generational voices are heard, which is still running today.
“This is the most important time on my calendar. We will protect this against everything else — no matter what’s going on with the business.” — Brightstar CEO, on maintaining the reverse mentoring sessions through COVID
Samantha’s takeaway from the experience was profound: mentoring is never just top-down. The best leaders stay curious. They remain students, even when — especially when — they are at the top.
Building Mentorship Programs That Actually Work
Samantha is practical and specific about what makes mentoring programs succeed. Bright Star’s structured approach includes outside expert support, thoughtful matching of mentors and mentees, and clear expectations from the start. But structure alone isn’t what makes it work.
What makes it work is genuine human connection. Samantha describes the one-on-one relationships she has built with mentees — learning what matters to them, what they’re worried about, what they want their career to look like — and how that understanding feeds back into how the organization is led and developed.
“If I’m doing half the job that my mentors did for me, I will be happy with that.” — Samantha Campbell
Why Mentorship Is a Retention Strategy
The link between mentorship and retention is one of the clearest threads in this conversation. Employees who feel seen, invested in, and guided — who have someone in their corner who is genuinely interested in their growth — are less likely to leave.
Samantha is direct: recruiting more people only solves one part of the talent problem. Keeping them is where the real work is. And the organizations doing that best are the ones investing in the human relationships that make people feel like they belong somewhere worth staying.
That investment doesn’t have to be complicated. It starts with a conversation, a commitment of time, and a genuine interest in the person sitting across from you.
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