Samara has a BSc degree from University of São Paulo and has earned her MSc degree in Wildlife Conservation from Federal University of São Carlos in 2016. She has been working in large-sized carnivore conservation projects since 2008, and has worked with jaguars, pumas and maned wolves in Brazil, lions, cheetahs and leopards in South Africa and Namibia, as well as tigers and elephants in Thailand. Her focus is on carnivore ecology, human dimensions of conservation, human-wildlife coexistence and environmental education. Samara began leading programs in Patagonia in early 2017, spent 2.5 years leading programs in Botswana, and then returned to Brazil where she has been developing new conservation initiatives for Round River in the Pantanal.