Ei Ei Samai

Ei Ei Samai is an educator, facilitator, and leadership consultant whose work bridges ancestral wisdom, organizational culture, and social transformation. Born in Myanmar and now based in California, Ei Ei brings over twenty years of experience in youth work, nonprofit leadership, and community education to her current practice as a trainer in permaculture, mediation, and restorative practices. A lifelong learner and “edge-walker,” she helps educators and organizations root their leadership in cultural stewardship, relational accountability, and living systems thinking.

Currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Education, Ei Ei’s research focuses on honorable stewardship of cultural and ancestral knowledge—especially for practitioners who transmit culture across global contexts, such as yoga teachers and classroom educators. Her work reimagines education as a space for re-mediation: a process of tending to relationships, power, and possibility as humanity navigates what she calls “the great turning.”

Through the Acosta Institute Fellowship, Ei Ei hopes to experience praxis in community—building alongside values-aligned colleagues who are midwifing new worlds through courage, creativity, and care. She is eager to explore how healing-centered education can help practitioners honor the past, cultivate the present, and dream futures where spirit, scholarship, and stewardship flow together like a living river.