“Does my community need me?”
This fundamental question has helped drive Fatimah Carmen Luisa Martinez Santiago’s decision-making over the past 30 years.
Carmen, a former NYC Outward Bound Schools student and longtime staff member, was recently elected as President of Poughkeepsie City School District’s Board of Education. The position comes with the tremendous responsibility to support 3,700+ students who live in a city divided by wealth disparity.
Decades before this, Carmen’s own high school career was determined in part by financial hardship. When her family could no longer afford tuition payments at Aquinas High School, she transferred to South Bronx High School, but had to repeat the 9th grade because her credits couldn’t be retrieved.
Carmen climbing up Table Rock during her trip with North Carolina Outward Bound.
Rebels With a Cause
Carmen working at the Verizon Building in downtown Manhattan, the longtime home of NYC Outward Bound Schools’ offices.
A self-described “disenchanted” student, the only thing that provided Carmen connection to her new school community was Project Discovery, an Outward Bound-run elective that integrated classroom learning with wilderness-based adventures and city-based experiences — the beginnings of what our school approach looks like today. After a six-week Outward Bound course in North Carolina, Carmen was hooked.
And then — a need emerged. Sparked by the 1992 LA Riots, racial tensions and gun violence in the South Bronx started to rise. Carmen and her fellow classmates, now equipped with leadership skills from their Outward Bound experiences, became the founding members of a new mentoring program, Rebels with a Cause.
“Growing up in challenging communities, it’s so important for teenagers to serve as positive role models,” Carmen said. “We took on the roles of ‘Outward Bound instructors’ and mentored middle school students through Rebels with a Cause.”
The program received overwhelming support from NYC Outward Bound’s Board of Directors, and its first grant from New York Foundation, which enabled Carmen to help build Rebels with a Cause from the ground up and expand the program into schools around the city.
“I took the lead in training my peers,” she said. “It was truly a youth-run, youth-developed program.”
Over the next two decades, Carmen took on various instructor roles beyond NYC, including in Costa Rica and for Thompson Island Outward Bound Center (now Cathleen Stone Island Outward Bound) as part of the Choices program, a program focused on student agency in Boston public schools. Once back at NYC Outward Bound Schools, she rose through the ranks to become Admissions Manager and Lead Medical Screener. In 2008, she received the Josh Miner Award, Outward Bound USA’s highest staff recognition.
When she became a single mom, Carmen had choices of her own to make.
“When my son was five and enrolled in kindergarten, he started showing signs of being autistic,” Carmen said. “He was going to need more supports, and I had to make the choice to give my son the best opportunities he could have.”
Carmen moved to Poughkeepsie and secured a home through Habitat for Humanity.
Carmen receiving OBUSA’s Josh Miner Award in 2008.
If you can know that the adults in your life — at every touch point, not just at home — care about you, then that is nourishing. It’s important that young people have that support. And then they become that for someone else.
She first got involved in the school district through the PTA, and soon — when others took note of her commitment to the work — was asked to run for the school board.
“Poughkeepsie is a tale of two worlds — rich and poor,” Carmen said. “The ward where I live has historically been abandoned, red-lined, subject to a lot of discriminatory policies. And the majority of students that we serve in the district come from this area.”
“After campaigning, it became even clearer to me how important it is to have representation in the school system — someone who understands the barriers and obstacles,” she added.
Carmen was elected to the school board, a role that required her to utilize many of the foundational lessons she had learned at Outward Bound.
“Richard [Stopol] was a phenomenal leader, and I was really lucky to be exposed to that. It set a precedent for me in how I view leadership,” Carmen said. “Second, I understand what true community and sense of belonging looks like and feels like from Outward Bound. And third is the love you pour into your students. They truly are the center and focus of the work we do.”
Not to mention that two of those district students are her own — Carmen’s youngest sons attend Poughkeepsie High School, and her oldest attends Dutchess Community College with plans to enroll at Marist for Spring ’25.
This summer, Carmen was nominated for School Board President by her fellow School Board members, and was unanimously elected to lead.
“My colleagues know that I can work in Crew, I can understand and navigate perspectives, I can build connections — all those beautiful concepts at Outward Bound,” she said.
Carmen with her three sons.
Time and time again, Carmen has filled a need in her community, and now as School Board President, she plans to integrate more social-emotional supports for students, understanding that schools are critical partners in the holistic development of young people.
“If you can know that the adults in your life — at every touch point, not just at home — care about you, then that is nourishing. It’s important that young people have that support,” said Carmen, reflecting on her own lived experiences as a high school student in the Bronx. “And then they become that for someone else.”