On an unusually warm day in November, I knocked on New York City Council Member Shekar Krishnan\u2019s door. I was in Queens, Diwali shopping with my family for our annual celebration. The South Asian Affinity Group\u2019s annual assembly was around the corner, and I — as a leader of the group — was looking for a speaker. This year\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Krishnan\u2019s office, I expected a possible speaker. I did not anticipate finding a Fieldston connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Krishnan\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. \u201cI definitely did not think I was going to go into government,\u201d Martinez recalled. She grew up wanting to be a pediatrician but soon realized this was not her calling. \u201cI 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.\u201d Martinez eventually settled on studying neurology in college, still on the science track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. \u201cI was hitting a lot of roadblocks [in getting people what they needed]. Many of those resources didn\u2019t exist or were extremely complicated to access,\u201d Martinez explained. \u201cI 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.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martinez\u2019s job as Krishnan\u2019s chief of staff is very dynamic. \u201cEvery day involves a different adventure, a different mini-crisis and a different project we\u2019re working on,\u201d 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martinez credits her experiences at Fieldston with shaping her collaborative mindset. She told me she often attributes her real-world exposure to Fieldston\u2019s MADs (Modified Awareness Discussions) and weekly assemblies: \u201cIt helped me shape my worldview, adopt an open perspective, and increase my desire to learn. We were told, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re going to take a day out of our typical learning to learn specifically about this ethical problem in our world.\u2019 That is what shaped my values and morals.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These conversations helped Martinez grow as a critical thinker, preparing her for the world outside of Fieldston. \u201cIt gets you into the habit of having more difficult conversations with your peers and colleagues, and that isn\u2019t something that typical schooling gives you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s office, persuading them to allow her to take both courses despite their conflicting bands. \u201cI wanted to pursue dancing and community service because that was important to me. And I didn\u2019t find it fair that I couldn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apart from Ava Heller and Ms. Vassos, Martinez\u2019s CSAB teacher, another inspiring teacher for Martinez was Mr. Montera, whom she had in her freshman year. \u201cI 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,\u201d Martinez recalls with a laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Montera\u2019s 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. \u201cI miss how beautiful everything was,\u201d Martinez says. On the day of our interview, it was snowing outside, making the quad especially gorgeous. Martinez laughs. \u201cDon\u2019t take it for granted now. Take advantage of it!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could not end the interview without asking Martinez about her yearbook superlative\u2013 it\u2019s a fundamental part of senior year! Although Martinez did not have a hard copy of her yearbook, she thought it would be something like, \u201cIn 10 years, still saying the word obscene.\u201d (Author\u2019s note: I checked Martinez\u2019s page in the 2014 yearbook, and she was spot on!) \u201cI had a hyper fixation on words and would just say \u2018that\u2019s obscene\u2019 about everything,\u201d Martinez explained. \u201cI don\u2019t think I still say \u2018that\u2019s obscene,\u2019 but I still do have hyper fixation on words!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Would Martinez\u2019s senior self be surprised where she ended up today? \u201cI think it was a natural progression,\u201d Martinez replies after some thought. \u201cA 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\u2019t realize it at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To close, I asked Martinez to give one piece of advice to her senior self. After considering for a moment, she replied, \u201cTrust yourself and believe the decisions you\u2019re making are the right ones, and things are going to work out at the end of it.\u201d Martinez said her father told her she\u2019d never get it wrong, and she did not internalize this until recently. \u201cWith the right head on your shoulders or with the right kind of mentorship and values, you\u2019re going to make the right decisions. And it\u2019s okay if you make the wrong ones! Things are going to work out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On an unusually warm day in November, I knocked on New York City Council Member Shekar Krishnan\u2019s door. I was in Queens, Diwali shopping with my family for our annual celebration. The South Asian Affinity Group\u2019s annual assembly was around the corner, and I — as a leader of the group — was looking for a speaker. This year\u2019s assembly aimed to build common ground between South Asian and U.S. cultures. Krishnan was the best<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":301,"featured_media":11249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[535,644,318,320],"tags":[],"coauthors":[656],"class_list":["post-11248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-features","category-news","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Screenshot-2025-01-28-at-9.48.01-PM-e1738118929418.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/301"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11250,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11248\/revisions\/11250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11248"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}