Samantha Falewée is a travel editor and writer — she seeks enriching stories at the intersection of luxury travel, wildlife conservation, and Indigenous culture. Her mission is to deepen human understanding and connection to the natural world around us through storytelling.
Samantha began her career as an intern in 2011 at National Geographic; most recently, she was a senior print editor at Travel + Leisure. Currently, she is pursuing a master’s degree in Animal Studies at New York University.
Samantha draws on her extensive travel experience (six continents) and more than ten years of editorial roles. She has reported on Indigenous alpine climbers in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, and has sent writers on assignment to track maned wolves in Brazil’s cerrado grasslands and habituate leopards in South Africa.
In 2024, “Isle of Freedom,” a piece Samantha edited for Travel + Leisure, was awarded the Gold Award (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Travel) by the North American Travel Journalists Association. That same year, Samantha was invited to speak as a panelist at the world’s largest international Indigenous tourism conference, in the unceded Algonquin Anishinabeg Territory in Ottawa, Ontario. She has served as a board member of ASME Next, the leading organization for early-career print and digital journalists, part of the American Society of Magazine Editors. Her writing has been published in Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Virtuoso Life, Rova, Wine Spectator, Whisky Advocate, and Cigar Aficionado, in addition to a book review for National Geographic.
Samantha has represented Travel + Leisure to the brand’s Travel Advisory Board, a noted group of 26 of the top travel advisors and agency owners collectively managing more than 7,000 travel designers and driving more than $14.5 billion in annual sales.
A France-U.S. citizen, Samantha speaks French and was certified by the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (Level II) in 2016. She is an avid, certified scuba diver (SSI Advanced Open Water). In 2024, she became certified in wildlife tracking by the Field Guides Association of Southern Africa.
Some of Samantha’s favorite hotels and lodges include:
Six Senses Ranthambore, in Rajasthan
The Mount Nelson, in Cape Town
St. Regis Bora Bora, French Polynesia
Shash Diné Eco Retreat, in the Navajo Nation
The Royal Mansour, in Marrakech
andBeyond Sandibe, in the Okavango Delta
Explora Los Torres, in Patagonia
Soho Beach House Canouan, in the Grenadines
Royal Malewane, in Kruger National Park
In her free time, you can find Samantha outside with her dog, Sunny. Her last name rhymes with “far away.”