Community Volunteer
Woodside, CA
Carmen DiCinque is particularly excited to join Stanford’s DCI in the Education Teaching Learning Pathway with the aim to pull together the various and varied strands of professional and personal interests that have evolved over the past three decades.
After graduation from Hamilton College with a BA in Classics in 1986, and two years teaching high school Latin and Spanish, Carmen spent the first decade of her adult life studying, teaching and reveling in Italian language and literature. Receiving her PhD from New York University, with a dissertation on Contemporary Italian Poetry, Carmen taught in the urban jungle at NYU and Hunter College and in the deep New Hampshire woods of Dartmouth College.
When she and husband Stuart Schonberger married in 1999, Carmen joined him in Beijing, China, where Stuart was already living and working. Together they began their family, and Carmen was full-time mom to their two Beijing-born daughters. During her 11 years there, Carmen enjoyed donning the many hats of a long-term expat: she served on the board of the now-named United Foundation for China’s Health and was as advisor and part-time teacher at the bilingual Daystar Academy; an active member of the lay-led Kehillat Beijing; supervised the literal construction of the family home, played weekly with the residents of a local orphanage; and coordinated events at the Yin-Yang Community Center.
In 2010 the family moved to Woodside, California, with two kids, two dogs and two cats in tow from China, and Carmen reprised many of her Beijing roles with an American twist. She has spent much of her time as a Woodside School volunteer, as room parent, classroom aid, auction committee member, VP of Parent Education and member of the Inclusion and Diversity Council; served on the Board of Trustees of Congregation Beth Jacob with a particular focus on teen engagement and homeless relief effort; is currently a board member and Regional Team Leader for the Common Ground Speaker Series; and takes great joy as a regular “side-walker” at the National Center for Equine Facilitated Therapy. She also supervised the literal construction of the family home, again! Carmen spends her free time trail riding her daughter’s retired hunter mares; hiking, reading and cooking.
DCI Fellow: Stuart Schonberger