Rhiannon (Schroeder) Samuel ’10 thought of leaving New Mexico in 2017. Finishing her stint as Director of Communications for the City of Albuquerque and Mayor Richard Berry, she considered continuing her professional career in another state. 

“I had opportunities in Portland, Austin and New York City for jobs with PR firms,” she said in a January 2021 interview. “I was leaving because of the challenges faced in New Mexico — education, crime, and quality of life. But as I considered it, I realized I didn’t feel I had done enough to fix the problems before running away from them.”

At the same time, Dale Armstrong, president and CEO of TLC Plumbing and Utility, found himself frustrated with partisan gridlock in the state legislature and looking to create a nonprofit to bridge the people of New Mexico with their lawmakers. 

“He wanted to do something to give back to the community,” Samuel said. “I loved this idea.”

Armstrong launched Viante New Mexico and Samuel became its founding executive director. The nonpartisan nonprofit works to make state legislation transparent and understandable. It strives to allow working New Mexicans to know who their elected officials are and how they perform on their behalf. Viante encourages bipartisanship and focuses on the common ground principles of education, crime reduction and economic opportunity.

Samuel’s interest in community service blossomed at St. Pius X High School, where she helped start a community service club with SPX Community Service Director Alicia Eiler ’83.

“St. Pius empowered us to engage our peers and have a broader impact,” Samuel said. “We looked for opportunities to have direct connection with the people we were trying to serve, whether cooking at Ronald McDonald House or working with Habitat for Humanity, sitting down and talking with the families and learning what they were going through helped us make that connection. St. Pius gave us the avenues to express that commitment to volunteering and service in many different ways.” 

Samuel said the connections and friendships established at St. Pius are most treasured, especially meeting Adan Samuel-Alderete ’10 in freshman English. The high school sweethearts have now been married for five years.

“When I think of St. Pius I get a feeling of warmth, a feeling of being at home in a space that wanted the best for me and brought out the best of me,” Samuel said. 

Theology teacher Scott Howard ’85 and English teacher Phil Zuber were great influences during her high school years. “Both of them treated their students like adults, like we had the ability to think for ourselves,” she said. “Because of them I became a critical thinker.”

She also was greatly influenced by her theology courses, especially her world religions class. “It opened my eyes to other religions and created a deep interest in why religion existed and in what forms,” she said. It also caused her to think about how people who seem to come from opposing viewpoints are generally more similar than they are different.

That interest continued as she pursued a bachelor’s degree in communications and religious studies at the University of New Mexico. She anticipated getting a master’s degree in theology and working for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe to help communicate the faith in New Mexico and help share those similarities.

An internship with Mayor Berry changed her course. After graduating from UNM in 2014, she was asked to stay and work in the mayor’s administration and became the youngest department director in the city’s recent history at age 23. She said working in the administration showed her she didn’t fall into either political camp. “I cared more about communicating our similar goals,” she said. That continues with Viante as she works to highlight bipartisanship with the state legislature.

“What started in religion at Pius and thinking about how we are more similar than different has translated to the political arena,” she said.

She also smiles at the fact that her interests in politics and religion are the two things we are told to never talk about at a dinner party. But talking, at least on the political side, is what she is doing. Since 2019, she has been the on-air political expert for local ABC television affiliate KOAT. 

“They wanted an on-air expert to break down the issues in a non-partisan way,” Samuel said. She offered commentary on the state legislative session, the primaries, President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Rio Rancho and the presidential debates. “I was hesitant to be considered an expert; it was an area of growth for me,” she said. “I made it clear with them I was not going to tell people what to think, I would lay out facts hopefully in a way that an everyday person could understand.”

Samuel also finds time to give back to organizations that poured resources into her, including the St. Pius X High School Foundation. She joined the foundation board in 2019. “It is a way to give back to the institution that has given me so much,” she said. “I was extremely fortunate to go to Pius. It was not always easy for my family, but it was the best opportunity for me. I learned to work well with others, be compassionate and it built the foundation of who I am.”