Crista Samaras ’99

Crista Samaras is the CEO and founder of Brave Enterprises. She is an inventor, businesswoman, record-setting lacrosse player, coach, writer, actress and mother. While at Princeton, Samaras was Rookie of the Year, two-time Ivy League Player of the Year, and three-time All American. She was the first player—man or woman — to score 50 goals in a single season during her sophomore year. After graduating, Samaras went on to win a gold medal in the 2001 IFWLA World Cup and a silver medal in the 2005 IFWLA World Cup. Samaras was an assistant coach at Yale University in 2000 and 2001. She then went on to lead the Richmond Women’s Lacrosse team from a national ranking of 33 to 13 in the 2012 season as its Interim Head Coach. In 2000, she founded XTEAM lacrosse, a national club for girls from non-traditional lacrosse areas who wanted to pursue playing in college. In 2014, she sold XTEAM to Trilogy Lacrosse, owned by Tigers Rob Linsday ’14 and Ryan Boyle ’04. In 2016, Samaras founded Brave Enterprises to help people do hard things. Brave’s mission is to craft practice-based programming that will inform brave-inspired behaviors for people who want to make a habit of taking action.