Rob Martin

Rob Martin is beginning his 10th year with Strive Trips. He began his coaching career while teaching in the Peace Corps in Malawi. Since then, he has coached numerous state and national qualifiers in sprinting, jumping, and long distance events while living in New York. During his four years at Packer Collegiate in Brooklyn, he coached his girls and boys teams to six conference titles and two state births for cross country. Now at Xavier High School, he is part of a coaching staff that has seen the Knights win two Catholic NY State titles in cross country in the last three years.

Rob was a high school runner but eventually found himself on the coaching side of things once he reached college. His itch to get out of the Midwest eventually got the best of him. Soon after graduating from Purdue University, Rob’s first trip outside the U.S. landed him in Ntchisi, Malawi where he spent three years teaching high school students, training mathematics teachers, and coaching cross country runners through the Peace Corps. He fell in love with the Warm Heart of Africa, learning to speak Chichewa and greetings in many other Bantu languages. Rob eventually settled in The Big Apple soon after his return from Malawi. He feels that New York brings the world to him every day he walks out the door.

During his decade of teaching in New York, Rob was lucky enough to coach many state and nationally ranked runners, until the international bug big him again. In 2010, he found a unique opportunity to combine his travel and coaching experience, being STRIVE’s first group leader at it’s inaugural session in Kenya. In 2016, Rob accepted a call to be part of a Peace Corps Response group to help reopen Sierra Leone’s schools post-Ebola. He is currently training mathematics and science teachers at a Sierra Leone university before he returns to Kenya this summer with STRIVE. Despite his love of coaching and teaching mathematics, nothing compares with the joy he feels seeing STRIVErs engulfed in the songs, smiles, and hospitality of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa.