On an unusually warm day in November, I knocked on New York City Council Member Shekar Krishnan’s door. I was in Queens, Diwali shopping with my family for our annual celebration. The South Asian Affinity Group’s annual assembly was around the corner, and I — as a leader of the group — was looking for a speaker. This year’s assembly aimed to build common ground between South Asian and U.S. cultures. Krishnan was the best of both worlds: a son of immigrants and the first Indian on the New York City Council who represented three of the most diverse districts in the world. If anyone knew about bridging differences, it would be him.
At Krishnan’s office, I expected a possible speaker. I did not anticipate finding a Fieldston connection.
Krishnan’s Chief of Staff, Chanel Martinez, answered the door. She graduated from Fieldston in 2014 and was excited to have Krishnan featured in a schoolwide assembly at her alma mater. She would soon tell me that these assemblies were instrumental in shaping her worldview.
I was curious to learn more about this Fieldston alumnus and how I found her in the middle of Queens working for a New York City Council Member. So, after the SAAG Assembly, I sat down with Martinez for an interview. Although she is the Chief of Staff for Council Member Krishnan today, her path to politics was not straightforward. In fact, when she was at Fieldston, she would not have considered working with a politician. “I definitely did not think I was going to go into government,” Martinez recalled. She grew up wanting to be a pediatrician but soon realized this was not her calling. “I remember being in the biology section of Fieldston and having a total panic attack about no longer wanting to be a pediatrician but no longer knowing what I wanted to do with my life.” Martinez eventually settled on studying neurology in college, still on the science track.
After attending Barnard for undergrad, Martinez began a community outreach job at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Working with immigrant cancer patients, Martinez helped them navigate the complexities of social service, including enrolling in health insurance, finding grants and support for their treatments and obtaining low-cost medical equipment. This was when she realized she wanted a career shift. “I was hitting a lot of roadblocks [in getting people what they needed]. Many of those resources didn’t exist or were extremely complicated to access,” Martinez explained. “I wanted to go further than population-based health and start changing the policies that got people to this point where healthcare was so hard to reach.” This new direction inspired Martinez to volunteer for a city council race, which would directly impact the NYC community. After winning his election, newly-elected Council Member Shekar Krishnan offered her a position on his team.
Martinez’s job as Krishnan’s chief of staff is very dynamic. “Every day involves a different adventure, a different mini-crisis and a different project we’re working on,” she explained. Martinez works on constituent cases, and on any given day, she can be found tackling issues from handling an eviction to pruning a tree on someone’s block. Her job also involves jumping on calls with organizations to negotiate funding allocations and the services necessary for their communities. A major district project can require her to juggle over 10-15 calls in one day, often on very short notice.
Martinez credits her experiences at Fieldston with shaping her collaborative mindset. She told me she often attributes her real-world exposure to Fieldston’s MADs (Modified Awareness Discussions) and weekly assemblies: “It helped me shape my worldview, adopt an open perspective, and increase my desire to learn. We were told, ‘Hey, we’re going to take a day out of our typical learning to learn specifically about this ethical problem in our world.’ That is what shaped my values and morals.”
These conversations helped Martinez grow as a critical thinker, preparing her for the world outside of Fieldston. “It gets you into the habit of having more difficult conversations with your peers and colleagues, and that isn’t something that typical schooling gives you.”
While at Fieldston, Martinez participated in various activities that contributed to key formative experiences. She did cross country and softball for one season each. Martinez was also in CSAB and the Fieldston Dance Company (DCO), which is an extremely unusual combination. Doing both is not typically allowed. Martinez recalls the hours she sat in her dean’s office, persuading them to allow her to take both courses despite their conflicting bands. “I wanted to pursue dancing and community service because that was important to me. And I didn’t find it fair that I couldn’t because they had conflicting schedules. Being empowered to create that space for myself was special. It was something I admired about Fieldston. Just those two classes and their teachers helped shape who I am today.”
Apart from Ava Heller and Ms. Vassos, Martinez’s CSAB teacher, another inspiring teacher for Martinez was Mr. Montera, whom she had in her freshman year. “I went on to become a sociology major, and I was writing 20-page papers in my sleep. That is 110% because of Mr. Montera and his preparation in my freshman-year class,” Martinez recalls with a laugh.
Montera’s papers were not the only Fieldston-related memories that remain today with Martinez. She has fond recollections of the quad, the campus and the dance studios. “I miss how beautiful everything was,” Martinez says. On the day of our interview, it was snowing outside, making the quad especially gorgeous. Martinez laughs. “Don’t take it for granted now. Take advantage of it!”
I could not end the interview without asking Martinez about her yearbook superlative– it’s a fundamental part of senior year! Although Martinez did not have a hard copy of her yearbook, she thought it would be something like, “In 10 years, still saying the word obscene.” (Author’s note: I checked Martinez’s page in the 2014 yearbook, and she was spot on!) “I had a hyper fixation on words and would just say ‘that’s obscene’ about everything,” Martinez explained. “I don’t think I still say ‘that’s obscene,’ but I still do have hyper fixation on words!”
Would Martinez’s senior self be surprised where she ended up today? “I think it was a natural progression,” Martinez replies after some thought. “A big part of the issue was not having the vocabulary and exposure to different careers, and thinking the way I wanted to help people was through medicine and not realizing I wanted to adopt much more of a broader population-based approach. And so, now that I look back on it, it made sense all along. I just didn’t realize it at the time.”
To close, I asked Martinez to give one piece of advice to her senior self. After considering for a moment, she replied, “Trust yourself and believe the decisions you’re making are the right ones, and things are going to work out at the end of it.” Martinez said her father told her she’d never get it wrong, and she did not internalize this until recently. “With the right head on your shoulders or with the right kind of mentorship and values, you’re going to make the right decisions. And it’s okay if you make the wrong ones! Things are going to work out.”
