Building Community in Big Tech: In Conversation with Stephanie Chosen

I first met Stephanie Chosen through Samsung UK’s Black Professionals Employee Resource Group (ERG). At the time, I worked in Customer Experience Digital and Customer Journey while she sat within Mobile Experience Brand and Product Marketing - two functions that, in an organisation as vast as Samsung, might never have intersected. But ERGs collapse hierarchy and distance.

Now, as Loyalty & Performance Lead at Samsung UK, Steph oversees one of the company’s most powerful owned platforms. Ahead of International Women’s Day, and in the slipstream of the recent Galaxy S26 flagship launch, we sat down to trace her path from a creatively inclined child designing a Christmas card for her local MP to a strategist shaping digital community at scale.

Her story is not one of reinvention. It’s one of alignment – between creativity and commerce, community and conversion, ambition and service.

As someone who graced the prestigious Galaxy Unpacked stage in 2024, people might automatically assume that Steph has always been a self-confident person. But as I chat with her, that assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.

As a young child, Steph once refused to smile with her teeth. “My mum would always ask why I didn’t show my teeth,” she recalls. “And I was like, well, because I’ve got a gap.” She laughs now, but growing up, she was hyper-focussed on the parts of herself she wanted to hide. Baggy clothes. Closed-mouth smiles. A quiet instinct towards invisibility.

The shift came gradually: a co-ed college environment, fashion channels, runway coverage, America’s Next Top Model on repeat. And then there was Agyness Deyn – platinum blonde, androgynous, and unmistakably herself.

“She was just so my vibe,” Steph says. “And she stood firm in who she was.”

That confidence – self-defined rather than externally validated – reframed something. She began to understand that identity is less about universal approval and more about alignment. Growing up in the church reinforced that foundation. Her father, an architect turned marketing practitioner in Nigeria and a Reverend, instilled early the idea of service – to herself and to others. Public speaking came naturally. Creativity, too. At seven, Steph won a borough-wide competition to design a Christmas card for her local MP, earning a trip to the Houses of Parliament. The scale of it all left an impression, and it served as a soft launch pad for her creative career.

From Consumer Insight to Global Platforms

Steph’s move into marketing was less a pivot than convergence. With her father’s influence, she understood early that creativity and commerce were not mutually exclusive. With a Morrisby Test confirming what she already sensed – analytical, imaginative, and people-oriented – a career in marketing seemed like it was carved out for her from the jump.

After studying marketing at university, she interned at Mullen Lowe (formerly DLKW Lowe), working on brands including Herbal Essences. Her first formal role was at a boutique creative agency, Antidote, where she worked as a planner translating consumer psychology into creative briefs.

“I really enjoyed the research,” she says. “Understanding what motivates people to act and feeding that into the creative.”

From there, she moved client-side to Sony’s global marketing team before freelancing for three years and eventually joining Samsung. She joined the company’s brand and product marketing team for two years before stepping into her current role as Loyalty & Performance Lead for UK & Ireland. The through-line across roles has remained consistent.

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“The most powerful marketing happens when you advocate for the consumer, not manage them.”

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Reframing Loyalty

Within Samsung’s ecosystem, Steph leads the Members platform - an app embedded across Samsung’s smartphones and tablets. Officially, it functions as a loyalty and rewards platform. In practice, it’s something far more strategic: a first-party data engine, a community hub and a direct-to-consumer channel housed inside the hardware itself.

“How I would like for Members to be seen is as the go-to centralised platform that rewards loyalty to Samsung,” she says. “There’s so much richness in what it could become.”

Too often, owned platforms are reduced to conversion vehicles – engineered to sell rather than serve (or better, both). Steph’s ambition is broader. She sees Members as relationship infrastructure – a space that reminds customers of the value of being part of the Samsung ecosystem, where they are valued beyond the transaction.

That ambition, however, exists in constant tension with commercial reality.

Community vs Conversion

Community-building and commercial performance aren’t competing forces, but they are competing priorities. When asked how she strikes the balance, Steph says “it’s a daily conversation.” “There’s never a sweet spot for a prolonged period of time.”

Around flagship launches, the dial shifts decisively towards conversion.

The platform leans into its sales-driving function with sharper targets and tighter messaging. When the launch window closes, the focus then shifts to loyalty – sustaining trust and building the long game.

As research, exploration and purchase collapse into a single digital journey, pressure on embedded platforms like Members intensifies. Every touchpoint is now a potential transaction, so striking the right balance between conversion and community is heightened now, more than ever before. Conversion should follow value, not replace it.

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“Be the consumer's voice in the room. I need to advocate for engineering that sense of community in an authentic way that allows us to drive commercial messages that don't feel like we're simply seeing them as a money-making machine.”

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Leadership as a Service

When the conversation turns to leadership, her answer is immediate. "Great leadership is to be of service," Steph says. For her, leadership is not directive authority. It is environmental design, creating the conditions for others to perform at their best. “Leadership can be seen as telling people what to do,” she says. “But really it’s about enabling and empowering people to make those decisions themselves.” She admires those who step back and allow others to shine in the areas they are gifted in. Influence, in her view, compounds when it is shared.

The ERG Effect

Steph serves as Partnerships Lead within Samsung UK’s Black Professionals ERG – the same network through which we met. “I’ve met such amazing people who have been instrumental in my integration with the organisation – and sustaining my level of sanity,” she says.

Her involvement in the ERG mirrors her leadership philosophy: to be of service. Wherever she finds herself, she builds beyond the job itself.  “I think it comes back to that sense of giving back.”

Leadership, Reframed

Steph’s career is defined by consistency of philosophy. From a teenager learning to reframe how she saw herself, to a leader stewarding one of Samsung’s most powerful owned platforms, she has always advocated for people first.

Whether translating consumer insight into creative strategy, navigating the commercial pressure of a flagship launch, or building infrastructure through an ERG, she insists on building something that gives before it takes.

In an era obsessed with monetising every touchpoint, that restraint feels almost radical. Platforms aren’t just funnels. Leadership is not just authority. Community is not just a KPI.

The leverage lies in service. And the girl who once hid her smile now builds spaces where others don’t have to.  

Get to know Steph:

Born: London, UK

Ethnicity: Nigerian 🇳🇬

Favourite Samsung product: I'm a foldables convert. I've got the Fold6 and I love it

As a fashion lover, what's one woman-led fashion brand you love: Andrea Iyamah

Song on rotation: Pure Shores by All Saints