Holmdel Board Of Education Election 2025: Greg Fernandez

HOLMDEL, NJ — Candidate Greg Fernandez is running for election to the Holmdel Township Board of Education in the General Election on Tuesday, Nov. 4.

In November, Fernandez will run for one of three open full-term seats on the board with Joanne Lam and Brittany Manning under the campaign “Education Not Politics.”

The three will run against incumbents John Buckley and Jeff Mann, alongside newcomer Kevin Schroeter, who are all running under the campaign “Preserve Holmdel Schools.”

Ahead of the General Election, Patch posed several questions to Fernandez about his campaign platform, experience, and what sets him apart from other candidates running. His replies are below.

Editor’s Note: The following article contains information about one of the candidates running for the Holmdel Township Board of Education in 2025. Responses are written as received by Patch.

Patch has contacted all other candidates in this race with the same questions and will post replies as they are received.

Are you running for the Holmdel Township Board of Education? Contact Sara Winick at sara.winick@patch.com for information on being featured in a candidate's profile and submitting campaign announcements to Patch.

Greg Fernandez

Age: 52
Town of Residence: Holmdel
Education: BA, Columbia University; MD, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Occupation: Physician

What drove you to seek public office?
I was lucky enough to be a product of the Holmdel school system in a truly exceptional era. I am forever grateful.

The foundation to the success I’ve had in my life and career is the critical thinking skills I developed in the school system. Nothing stays the same forever, and the district has drifted from that high watermark over time, for any number of reasons.

I have kids in the district now, and want them — and all the students in the district — to be able to say the same thing that I can say: “When I graduated the Holmdel school system, I was more than ready for the roads ahead.”

What sets you apart from the other candidates?
While I have never been on the BOE, the two incumbent candidates have been on the BOE for one three-year term. It is fair to assume that change processes on a district level probably take longer than any 3-year board member’s term.

In seeing their campaign, I can’t help but ask: how much could these two incumbents have materially contributed to the successes they are claiming in a single three-year term?

While I have never been on the BOE, I can say with confidence that the one thing that I bring to the Holmdel BOE is my career as a physician, which, in addition to taking care of patients, has involved leading institutional changes over long periods of time, with a strong track record of delivering results involving multimillion-dollar budgets and many stakeholders.

What are past accomplishments or experiences that make you qualified for this position?
In my career as a physician, I’ve always worked at large institutions, including Kaiser Permanente, Penn Medicine, and now Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

While seeing patients daily throughout my career, I have held multiple leadership positions at those institutions. In particular, I have had a leadership role at both Penn and MSK in the design, implementation and successful rollouts of massive software system projects with multimillion-dollar budgets, multi-year planning processes, competing stakeholders and priorities, and no room for error.

I had to make decisions about funding, using the best data you have available, with a constant eye on a common goal. It requires critical thinking and the mental flexibility to realize how things at a granular level extrapolate to effects on entire systems (again — thanks Holmdel schools!!).

Furthermore, one is required to manage many competing priorities simultaneously, in the case of Epic, providing the best care possible to the patient. I have learned lessons from this process that I think should translate well to developing and managing a school budget.

Lastly, while I can’t say I am an educator in any formal sense, my appointment at MSK is academic; I hold a professorship at Weill Cornell Medical School, and have long been involved in the bedside and formal lecture training of medical students, residents, and fellows.

While it’s certainly different from teaching children, that experience gave me insight into how people learn and what it takes to support teachers and students alike.

I may not have served on a Board of Education before, but I’ve spent years working in collaborative environments that demand preparation, clear communication, accountability, and respect for professional educators — all of which I’d bring to this role.

If elected, what will be your top priorities in your new role?
The looming budget deficit is an enormous priority for every candidate, regardless of who wins in the election, and every sitting board member as well. My personal priority would be to focus on curriculum and academics.

Specifically, I want to look at how we can improve performance across the district, without spending extra money to do so, given the district’s current financial picture.

What comes to mind most prominently is Indian Hill; Indian Hill achieved Blue Ribbon status this year — and deservedly so; yet there is a big disparity between Indian Hill and the academic performance of the other schools in the district, year over year, for the past 3 or 4 years. The school system I attended did not peak in 6th grade.

Name one thing about Holmdel that always makes you smile.
Holmdel Park. Apart from the fact that it’s beautiful year-round, I have a ton of memories there with important people in my life; playing there with my family as a kid, and now playing with my own kids there; walking with my mom around the lake, or in the arborteum; hanging out on a shady patch of the lawn somewhere with my high school friends. Sometimes a happy smile, sometimes a wistful smile, but always a smile.