Sonja Santelises
Sonja Santelises has been the CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools since May 2016.
Biography
Sonja Santelises was raised in Peabody, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. Her father Jackson Andrew Brookins was a chemist from Mississippi who was also an industrial relations executive for Eastman Kodak, and her mother Verna was a former social worker who was in charge of community relations at Polaroid as well as a district minister for the Pentecostal church. Both of her parents grew up in the Jim Crow south. She has a younger sister, Shahara, who became a college professor.Her family were Protestants, but Santelises went to Bishop Fenwick High School, a private Catholic high school. She received a bachelor's degree in English literature and International Relations from Brown University, a Master's degree in Education Administration from Columbia University, and a doctorate in Education Administration, Planning and Social Policy from Harvard University. She worked for 25 years for urban school systems as an administrator and educator before heading BCPS.
She is married to Lew Santelises, who is an American hedge fund and private equity fund manager who founded Santelises Fund Management. They have three daughters, including two fraternal twins. She has given a TEDx talk.
From 2010 to 2013, Santelises was the chief academic officer in Baltimore, then served as vice president for The Education Trust, where she worked on K-12 policy and practice.