Staff: Jennifer Reed Martinez

Jennifer Reed-Martinez grew up in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee. After earning her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, she interned at Wears Valley Ranch, a residential children’s home, where she discovered her love of teaching and working alongside young people from underserved communities. That experience led her to Fort Worth, Texas, to earn a Master of Education, and then to San Antonio, where she spent eight years teaching high school English at a Title I campus. Her time in the classroom shaped a conviction that every young person deserves consistent, caring adults in their corner.

Jennifer brought that conviction into nonprofit development at Musical Bridges Around the World, a San Antonio performing arts organization, where she led community engagement and wrote and managed grants supporting arts and education programs for youth. Most recently, she served as Grants Manager at ChildSafe, San Antonio’s Children’s Advocacy Center, dedicated to child abuse prevention and family advocacy, where she oversaw a large grant portfolio and partnered closely with program officers to communicate the impact of trauma-informed services. She is a Certified Texas Mental Health Peer Specialist and serves as Stewardship Chair for the Alamo Area Chapter of the Grant Professionals of America. Jennifer is excited to join Friends of the Children, where the commitment to showing up for kids for 12+ years, no matter what, reflects what she saw make the biggest difference in her students’ lives.

Jennifer lives in San Antonio with her husband, Angel, and their three sons. When she isn’t writing grants, she can be found tending her garden, catching live music, traveling, or curled up with a good book. She also volunteers with the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition.