Staff Profile: Christina Schiffner Santschi, Grant Specialist & Data Manager
Christina first discovered Center for Domestic Peace (C4DP) through a Craigslist ad online. She had just finished coursework at the University of California, Berkeley, pursuing a Ph.D. in Music History with a specialization in nineteenth-century Italian opera. Christina wanted to find a job that used her writing and research skills, and she was moved by C4DP’s mission, having experienced relationship abuse while in college. In July 2004, she began her tenure at C4DP. She left for several years to work in development for another domestic violence nonprofit in the East Bay, where she lived at the time. In 2009, she was excited to return to C4DP to focus on grant writing, which coincided with her move to Marin.
Over the last decade plus, Christina’s role as Grants Specialist and Data Manager has grown increasingly complex. She now manages all C4DP’s reporting and proposal submissions to government and foundation sources. Christina has found it stimulating to work with leadership and program staff in developing detailed proposals for new programs, including Marin Against Youth Abuse (MAYA) – a youth leadership program – and In This Together – group therapy for children and their non-abusing parents. Securing funding for both initiatives enabled C4DP to create a new service area for youth and young adults. Christina also tracks and compiles more than 500 deliverables a year for multiple funders – she feels at home navigating large Excel spreadsheets and pulling reports in C4DP’s Salesforce participant database.
Christina is proudest of the work she has done overseeing Salesforce, including a complete overhaul and rebuild of the database in 2019. Every quarter you’ll find Christina and her data team crunching numbers, analyzing data, and writing reports on the life-saving work C4DP does, with thousands of individuals helped each year.
“Give me a complicated Excel formula to solve or a new deliverable to build out in Salesforce, and my brain hums away,” Christina relates. “I love puzzling out challenges, and my favorite time of the year is when I see the annual Executive Director Report – an 80-page data-filled summary of C4DP’s accomplishments through charts and graphs – in print and in the hands of the board of directors.”
In her free time, Christina trains for triathlons – swimming, biking, and running more than 9,000 miles since the start of 2020. She has competed in six IRONMAN full-distance triathlons (140.6 miles) and dozens of shorter races. She is perpetually trying to convince her husband David to join her for another bike ride or run – wind in her hair and data on her mind
