Our Team

Paulina van Eeden Hill, CAE

Chief Operating Officer

Paulina van Eeden Hill

Paulina van Eeden Hill, CAE, serves as Chief Operating Officer at SAM, where she oversees the day-to-day operations, drives strategic initiatives, and ensures companywide alignment with SAM's goals and objectives. In her association leadership role, she applies her extensive association management experience to impact organizations and members through strategic planning and execution, board governance, staff management, and member program and learning development. 

Prior to joining SAM in 2018, with more than a dozen years of experience working with associations, she served as Deputy Executive Director of the Texas Association for the Gifted & Talented (TAGT), leading strategy around professional development, events, business development, and governance. Her experience also includes serving as the convention experience manager at the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB), events manager at the Texas PTA, and meetings and communications manager for the Texas Association for School Nutrition (TASN).

She holds a degree in communications from The University of Texas at Austin and earned her Certified Association Executive (CAE) designation.

As a lifelong learner, Paulina actively participates in national and regional professional organizations, including serving as 2024–2025 Board Chair of the Texas Society for Association Executives (TSAE) and as an active volunteer for AMC Institute. 

Partners/Roles: Executive Director, Texas Association for the Gifted & Talented (TAGT); Managing Director, SocialOffset

Family: Paulina is married to her high school sweetheart, and they have a sweet tweenage boy.

Outside of work, I love... eating, reading, embroidery, Netflix, podcasts, and baking bread (before it was cool!).

My workplace super power is... I love connecting ideas from seemingly unrelated industries or businesses, bending them to make meaningful change in our organizations.

Assessments: Maverick (Predictive Index)

What inspires me about working with associations: I love associations. Supporting volunteers as they create community to move their field forward and creating learning opportunities for members to grow and evolve is the most fun! I also love working with our staff and watching them find their passion and hone their expertise to impact our mission.

My unique skills or passions: Connecting people to learning and community organized around their chosen field, industry, or career.

Favorite SAM core value: Stay curious. As a gatherer of hard lessons, great ideas, useful exemplars, and cherished mentors, I am able grow quickly and drive innovation and success through what I've learned. I view failures and mistakes as learning opportunities and am not afraid to take calculated risks to better a program or service. As uncomfortable as it can be, approaching issues and failures with an open mind and curious spirit has taught me deep lessons that I'm able to apply to new situations.