Children’s education, character development, and well-being are among the priorities of the ALL RISE Foundation, through which Samantha Judge participates in charitable initiatives alongside her husband, Aaron Judge. Her work with KultureCity concerns another form of community access: inclusion in sporting events, concerts, and other public experiences for people with sensory needs and invisible disabilities. Based in New York, she serves on KultureCity’s Board of Directors and helped establish a permanent sensory room at Madison Square Garden.
Her 2023 New York City Marathon finish in 3:31:44 provides one documented example of athletic participation tied to KultureCity, but her community involvement extends beyond running. Her other activities involve organizational service, a collaborative venue project, and charitable initiatives with a separate foundation. Each has a purpose that extends beyond an individual race.
The connection between involvement and participation is especially clear at Madison Square Garden. For some visitors, the lighting, crowds, and noise surrounding a game or concert can be overwhelming even when they want to share the occasion with others. The sensory room was established to provide a calmer environment within that venue.
Samantha Judge’s Board Service With KultureCity
KultureCity’s mission reaches people who may find sporting events, concerts, and other entertainment experiences overwhelming. Crowds, lighting, noise, and stimulation can affect the experience of individuals with sensory needs and invisible disabilities. Accessibility in these settings involves the surroundings that guests encounter, not simply the opportunity to attend an event.
Samantha Judge serves on the nonprofit’s Board of Directors. Sam Judge’s role on KultureCity’s board is a formal organizational affiliation, while the marathons she has run for KultureCity have offered opportunities to support its mission through awareness and fundraising. Both activities connect with the same nonprofit, though they involve different forms of participation.
KultureCity’s work also extends to entertainment settings where people participate as audience members rather than competitors. The conditions that affect attendance differ from the challenges faced by someone running a marathon. In either case, inclusion concerns whether people can take part in an experience while their needs are recognized.
For Samantha Judge, the relationship with KultureCity also includes a specific project inside Madison Square Garden. She and Aaron Judge worked with the nonprofit and the venue to establish and endow a permanent sensory space. That effort brought the organization’s mission into a setting used for both sports and entertainment.
A Shared Sensory Space at Madison Square Garden
Opened in 2024, the Aaron and Samantha Judge Sensory Room is a permanent space inside Madison Square Garden. The couple helped establish and endow it alongside KultureCity and the venue. KultureCity’s mission gives the project an inclusion focus, while Madison Square Garden provides the setting where guests can use the room.
The room provides a calming environment for guests with sensory processing needs and invisible disabilities. Adjustable lighting and calming visuals help distinguish it from the surrounding event space. Comfortable seating, tactile elements, a bubble wall, and other sensory tools are also available, giving visitors a setting with different sensory features from those of a major game or concert.
Through the shared sensory room project involving Sam Judge, support for inclusion took the form of a physical facility. Its intended purpose is to help children, adults, and families experience events together, including those who may previously have felt unable to attend. The room responds to conditions around an event, rather than changing the event guests came to attend.
Samantha Judge’s contribution to the shared project is associated with a space that remains part of the venue. Its presence is not tied to one game, concert, or fundraiser. This lasting physical setting gives her involvement in KultureCity another dimension beyond board membership and marathon participation.
Samantha Judge’s Participation Through the ALL RISE Foundation
The sensory room concerns the experience of attending an event. The ALL RISE Foundation has a separate charitable focus: children, education, character development, health and well-being, and leadership. Samantha Judge participates in its community and charitable initiatives with Aaron Judge.
The foundation’s priorities encompass several aspects of children’s development rather than the sensory conditions of event attendance. Community initiatives involving Sam Judge through ALL RISE are activities in which she participates with her husband. Her KultureCity affiliation, by comparison, includes a formal board position and contributions to a particular venue project.
The couple shares roots in Linden, California, and connections to Fresno State. They married in 2021 and later built a family together. Their shared involvement encompasses the sensory room project and participation in charitable initiatives through ALL RISE, despite the different purposes of those activities.
Marathon Participation Within a Broader Community Profile
Samantha Judge has completed multiple marathons, including repeated appearances in the TCS New York City Marathon. In 2023, she finished the New York race in 3:31:44 while representing and supporting KultureCity. The result records an individual athletic achievement linked to awareness and fundraising for the nonprofit.
At the 2026 Boston Marathon, Sam Judge served as a guide for Adrienne Bunn, an endurance athlete with autism. The role placed her alongside another competitor rather than centering the appearance on her own recorded finish. Bunn participated as an athlete in her own right, with guidance forming part of the race experience.
The two marathon appearances connect athletics with different kinds of support. New York brought an individual finish together with representation of KultureCity; Boston involved accompanying a fellow athlete. Neither appearance encompasses the full scope of her community involvement beyond endurance sport.
Sports participation can involve an athlete on a course or a guest in an arena, with different needs in each setting. Samantha Judge’s marathon participation concerns athletes on the course, while her contribution to the Madison Square Garden sensory room concerns guests attending events at the venue. The range of settings gives her community work a wider context than marathon running alone.
About Samantha Judge
In 2017, California State University, Fresno, recognized Samantha Judge’s graduate work on throwing mechanics and UCL injury susceptibility in Major League Baseball players as the Outstanding Master’s Degree Project in Kinesiology. A California native who attended Linden High School, she studied kinesiology at Fresno State. Her background also includes multiple marathon finishes and repeated appearances at the TCS New York City Marathon.
Now based in New York, she serves on KultureCity’s Board of Directors and was a guide for Adrienne Bunn at the 2026 Boston Marathon. Samantha Judge’s community involvement beyond athletics includes helping establish and endow the Madison Square Garden sensory room with other contributors and participating with her husband in charitable initiatives through the ALL RISE Foundation.
