Welcome From Dr. Zee Suntai

Artist. Scholar. Human first.

 

Zee Suntai is someone trying to hold both the sacred and the ordinary in the same breath. She’s a researcher, a writer, a singer, and someone who deeply believes in the possibility of healing—across systems, across families, across hearts.

 

In her academic life, she focuses on child welfare, particularly the ways race, gender, disability, and poverty intersect to shape outcomes for the most vulnerable. She holds a PhD in Social Work and works as a research specialist at the Children and Family Research Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her hope is simple: to do work that helps someone, somewhere, live more freely.

 

Outside the university, she creates art—songs, performances, moments—that speak to what can’t always be said in research papers. Her music is soft but fearless, joyful but honest. It’s not about perfection; it’s about presence. Her songs are love letters to everyone who’s ever needed permission to take up space, to be fully human. 

 

Her work, in all its forms, comes from the same place:

A deep reverence for life. A belief that we’re all meant to rise together.

And a quiet understanding that sometimes, being powerful just means being kind.

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