Samantha Chai

Samantha Chai is a three-time recipient of Fulbright Taiwan grants, where she served in rural education and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) contexts to develop SDG-based bilingual elementary curricula, support the Ministry of Education’s English as a Medium of Instruction initiatives at 5+ universities, and pilot intergroup dialogue certificate and cultural exchange programs. She previously worked with immigrant families disproportionately impacted by the pandemic as a Breakthrough Collaborative teaching fellow. Through these experiences, she learned how to empower students to become intercultural interlocutors and confident, well-informed members of the globalized world. Samantha’s passion for climate-resilient and community-led development is rooted in her experience as an educator and her background as a first-generation immigrant who spent her childhood in her family’s agricultural villages in Malaysia. 

At Georgetown, she worked as a student admissions ambassador, communications assistant, and macroeconomics teaching assistant. Additionally, she acted as treasurer of Georgetown Anti-Poverty Society.

Summer internship

I interned with Georgetown SFS Asia Pacific in collaboration with the Jakarta Property Institute and Jakarta’s municipal government. Over the course of ten weeks, I conducted baseline social assessments of Glodok, Jakarta’s historic Chinatown, to inform the following development projects: the multibillion-dollar Kota Tua Urban Revitalization plan, Mass Rapid Transit extension, and the Jakarta Education and Innovation Center. Through qualitative and multilingual fieldwork, I interviewed local stakeholders to analyze and report on the heritage area’s rapid urbanization, demographic change, and climate resiliency concerns. By the end of the summer, I co-organized a focus group discussion with the governor and 70+ international representatives from academia and the private sector, led a delegation of Georgetown professors on a case-study visit to Ipoh and Kampar, and synthesized my findings in an ethnographic study. I will return to Indonesia in 2027 to pursue policy labs while launching the survey and geographic information systems phase of my project. 

These experiences helped me broaden the quantitative and qualitative methods learned in GHD while gaining firsthand experience in procedural equity and community stewardship in Southeast Asia’s urban planning sector.