Samantha is the Executive Artistic Producer for Suspended Belief Theatre, an educationally focused puppet-arts theatre company in Bloomington, Illinois. She holds a B.A. in Visual Arts from Naropa University of Boulder, Colorado and additionally studied sculpture at West Virginia University through the School of Art and Design as well as puppetry, creative dramatics, and youth theatre through the University's School of Theatre and Dance. Through her internship with the Denver Center Theatre Company Properties Fabrication Shop and apprenticeship under Steven Overton of Olde World Puppet Theatre of Portland, Oregon, she became skilled in puppet engineering, properties design and construction as well as set design and construction for film and stage, and puppet manipulation techniques. She has worked with young children for a quarter of a century and has taught myriad aspects in the fine arts and theatre to people across the United States. Samantha currently presents professional development sessions on creative drama for early childhood educators that attend to the development of early childhood skills and curriculum content through the teacher-guided experiences of dramatic play and further constructs and performs puppets for Suspended Belief Theatre in Bloomington, Illinois where she also teaches creative drama classes for young children.