Roberto Santamaría Stepping Down As Director Of Fairwinds

After two years leading Fairwinds, the island's primary provider of behavioral health services, executive director Dr. Roberto Santamaría is leaving the non-profit to take a consulting job north of Boston.

Santamaría will be leaving Fairwinds by early October to join the public health consulting firm BME Strategies as its principal consultant.

"They basically made me an offer I couldn't refuse," Santamaría told the Current. "It's kind of a dream job. It's a public health consulting firm where I'll be able to help write policy at the highest levels in the state of Massachusetts, in the state of New York, and a couple other states that they have contracts with. It's pretty big."

Santamaría said Fairwinds would begin a search for a new executive director immediately, and his hope is to have his replacement lined up before his departure in October to give a "warm hand-off" to his successor. Santamaría will continue serving Fairwinds as a strategic advisor to both the leadership team and Board of Directors during the transition.

"The news is bittersweet," said Kevin Mullins, chair of the Fairwinds Board of Directors. "We are sorry to see Roberto leave his role as executive director, but we are deeply grateful for his leadership and wish him every success in his next chapter. Roberto helped place Fairwinds on stronger financial and operational footing while maintaining a clear focus on access to high-quality behavioral health services for the Nantucket community."

Santamaría emphasized that he will be leaving Fairwinds in a stronger fiscal position than he found it, and expressed his confidence in the organization moving forward.

"Fairwinds is at its strongest point it has been since I moved to the island 11 years ago," Santamaría said. "It's in the strongest financial position it's ever been, and I believe that this year we're finally going to be showing a surplus for the first time in its history. I'm incredibly proud of that."

In a recent letter to the Nantucket Contract Review Committee, which typically awards taxpayer-funded grants to Fairwinds and other island human services organizations, Santamaría expounded on Fairwinds' financial position in light of questions raised by the committee, and acknowledged an operating deficit in the last fiscal year.

"Fairwinds' current financial position is significantly stronger than what is reflected in its FY2025 audited financial statements," Santamaría wrote. "The operating deficit reported in FY2025 does not represent the organization's current financial trajectory, but rather the culmination of several accounting and operational issues inherited by the current leadership team during the final weeks of FY2024. A significant contributor to the FY2025 results was the discovery that prior federal ARPA, DSRIP, and similar grant funding had been accounted for incorrectly under previous financial management. Rather than being recorded as restricted or deferred revenue and recognized as allowable expenditures occurred, these funds had been recognized immediately as unrestricted operating revenue. As those restricted funds were subsequently expended over multiple fiscal years in accordance with their grant requirements, the related expenses were recognized without corresponding revenue, resulting in a significant deterioration of reported operating performance in FY2025. Additionally, Fairwinds undertook a comprehensive review of its balance sheet and accounts receivable, resulting in the write-off of years of uncollectible receivables and the recognition of previously unrecorded payroll accruals."

In response to the situation, Santamaría stated that Fairwinds had implemented "substantial governance and financial management improvements," including:
Transitioning financial management to CliftonLarsonAllen (CLA), a nationally recognized healthcare accounting firm.

• Transitioning financial management to CliftonLarsonAllen (CLA), a nationally recognized healthcare accounting firm.
• Engaging a fractional Chief Financial Officer to strengthen financial oversight, forecasting, and internal controls.
• Changing external audit firms to improve financial governance and reporting.
• Replacing revenue cycle management vendors and modernizing billing operations.
• Upgrading information technology infrastructure and financial reporting processes.
• Implementing stronger budget monitoring, cash flow forecasting, and operational performance reviews.

Santamaría became a recognizable face around the island when he was thrust into a leading role in the town's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, while serving as the island's municipal Health Department director. He left the town to lead Fairwinds in June 2024. Santamaría and his wife Erin Schrader, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, own a home on Nantucket and have two boys, ages 2 and six months, who were both born on the island.

"We don't want to lose any ties with the island here," he said. "Our boys were born here. It's become a place that we love."