Wilkes Consulting Services was established in July 2020 by Samuel Thomas Wilkes. Currently, Samuel is a PhD candidate in the Learning Sciences program at Clemson University.

Before attending graduate school, Samuel obtained an honors endorsed degree from Clemson with a major in English literature and a minor in Pan African Studies. While there, he routinely contributed to The Tiger, the on-campus student newspaper, tutored in English and Pan African Studies in the university's writing center and athletic academic services, and worked with Dr. Rhondda Thomas to document the history of African Americans at, and around, the university. Samuel's undergraduate honors thesis was titled "'Ah Wantah Cross Jurden in Uh Calm Time': Race, Gender, and Mobility in Zora Neale Hurston's Sweat."

Samuel's primary research focus centers around understanding how numerical underrepresentation becomes an embodied experience for African Americans in higher education. This involves interrogating the ways that it causes members of minoritized groups to consciously experience their bodies physically and existentially. Samuel additionally has peripheral interests in African American language, Hip Hop and Urban studies, writing center pedagogy, and culturally responsive learning environments. His work appears in Southern Discourse in the Center: A Journal of Multiliteracy and Innovation.