Samuel Phillip Gyimah is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament for East Surrey from 2010 to 2019.
37 Facts About Sam Gyimah
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Sam Gyimah subsequently joined the Liberal Democrats and stood unsuccessfully for them in Kensington at the 2019 general election.
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Sam Gyimah now serves on the board of Goldman Sachs International.
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Between 2014 and 2018, after serving as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and as a government whip, Sam Gyimah was promoted to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State.
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Sam Gyimah served as the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation from January 2018 until he resigned on 30 November 2018 in protest at Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement.
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Sam Gyimah was born on 10 August 1976 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.
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Sam Gyimah's father Samuel was a GP, and his mother Comfort Mainoo was a midwife.
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Sam Gyimah returned to the UK to sit GCSEs and A-levels at Freman College, a state school in Buntingford, Hertfordshire.
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Sam Gyimah then went on to Somerville College at the University of Oxford, where he read Politics, philosophy and economics, and was elected President of the Oxford Union in 1997.
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On graduation, Sam Gyimah joined Goldman Sachs as an investment banker, leaving the company in 2003 to set up Clearstone Training and Recruitment Limited with fellow future Conservative MP Chris Philp.
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In September 2005 Sam Gyimah edited a report by the Bow Group, a Conservative think tank, entitled From the Ashes: the future of the Conservative Party.
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Sam Gyimah was elected chairman of the Bow Group from 2006 to 2007.
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Sam Gyimah stood unsuccessfully for election in Kilburn ward in the 2006 Camden Council election.
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In December 2009, Sam Gyimah placed third in the Gosport primary election to succeed Peter Viggers, losing to Caroline Dinenage.
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Sam Gyimah became a member of the International Development Select Committee, and stated an interest in harnessing the private sector towards achieving international development goals.
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Sam Gyimah began to take an active part in debates on education and employment and in some local campaigns to protect the green belt in Surrey.
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In 2011, Sam Gyimah produced a report with the think-tank NESTA, "Beyond the Banks: the case for a British Industry and Enterprise Bond", in support of non-bank alternatives for businesses seeking finance.
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Sam Gyimah was the first member of parliament to call for credit-easing as a means of accelerating Britain's economic recovery.
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Sam Gyimah supported the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union in the EU referendum of 2016.
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On 20 November 2015, Sam Gyimah contributed to the filibustering of the opposition-proposed Compulsory Emergency First Aid Education Bill to make the teaching of first aid in secondary schools compulsory.
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Sam Gyimah spoke until the end of the debate, despite requests from the deputy speaker.
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Sam Gyimah was quoted as being concerned to not overload the National Curriculum.
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On 4 July 2016, as Childcare and Education Minister, Sam Gyimah launched Millie's Mark, a voluntary quality mark described as "the new gold standard" for nursery providers that trained all their staff in pediatric first aid.
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Sam Gyimah instead supported an amendment proposed by the government to existing legislation, in which only dead men convicted of such offences were automatically pardoned, while those who were living would have to apply to the Home Office through a "disregard" process whereby the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the conduct is no longer criminal.
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Sam Gyimah called on Higher Education leaders to prioritize student mental health, and spoke of his own financial struggles as an undergraduate.
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Sam Gyimah has warned that "there's a culture of censorship in some of our universities" and that threats to freedom of speech were not "some right-wing conspiracy theory that had been made up".
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In both cases, the universities in question reported that these things did not happen, and the Department for Education clarified later that Sam Gyimah had merely relayed students' anecdotes.
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Sam Gyimah said the UK's weakness in the negotiations over the Galileo satellite navigation project was the final straw and he intended to vote against May's deal in the House of Commons on 11 December 2018, and suggested the public should have the right to a final say on the withdrawal agreement in another referendum with the Article 50 process extended.
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Sam Gyimah resigned as a minister because he wants to be free to endorse a second referendum on Brexit.
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On 2 June 2019, Sam Gyimah announced his intention to stand as a candidate for the Conservative Party leadership election.
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Sam Gyimah was the only leadership candidate advocating for a second referendum.
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On 3 September 2019, Sam Gyimah joined twenty other rebel Conservative MPs to vote against the Conservative government of Boris Johnson.
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In October 2020, Sam Gyimah re-joined Goldman Sachs where he started his career, as a non-executive director of Goldman Sachs International and Goldman Sachs International Bank.
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Sam Gyimah married Nicky Black in 2012, with whom he has a son and a daughter.
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Sam Gyimah has been a volunteer and fundraiser for Crisis, the Down's Syndrome Association and St Catherine's Hospice in Surrey.
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Sam Gyimah has served as school governor of an inner London school, on the board of a housing association and on the development board of Somerville College.
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Sam Gyimah is a Vice-President of the Young Epilepsy charity in Lingfield, Surrey.