One step at a time: In Memory of Sandra Milena Martínez Cortés
Sami dedicated her life to building peace in Colombia. Remembering a 2021 Acumen Fellow, and the leadership she practiced one step at a time.
- Blog
- All impact sectors
- Latin America
Sandra Milena Martínez, a 2021 Acumen Fellow, believed that changing the world could begin with something as simple as listening.
Listening and smiling from the soul. This was how Sandra—or Sami, as our community knew her—described what it meant to create change.
“Transformation through simple things comes from listening, making time, smiling from the heart, valuing others, following our instincts, sharing tools and learnings, being present and ready to learn, seeing others as our allies and companions in the process of growth, and connecting our purpose with what the world needs.”
Sandra Milena Martínez Cortés
Sami dreamed of helping rebuild her community, strengthening the social fabric, and contributing to a Colombia capable of reconciling with its own history.
On August 15, we received the news we had spent nearly two years hoping would never come: Sami’s remains had been found. She had been missing since November 2024, when she was abducted from her home in El Paujíl, Caquetá.
As her family, loved ones, cohort, the Acumen community, and our team grieve this profound loss, we want to remember Sami for the way she lived, the people she walked alongside, and the Colombia she worked to build.
A Peacebuilder
Sami knew intimately the wounds that decades of armed conflict have left across Colombia. She was herself a survivor of the conflict, but she never allowed that experience to define the limits of her story. “More than a survivor, I am a peacebuilder, motivated to transform my community and empower women.”
That conviction shaped both her life and her leadership.
When Sami was selected from more than 550 applicants to join the 2021 cohort of the Acumen Fellows Program in Colombia, we saw in her a belief that would remain throughout her journey as a Fellow: that people can transform their own stories and, through them, transform the world around them.
At the time, she coordinated Círculo de Mujeres: Mi Mejor Versión (Women’s Circle: My Best Version), where she supported rural women in generating income and promoting nonviolent relationships. She also taught personal finance in rural communities, giving farmers, young people, women entrepreneurs, and homemakers the tools to strengthen their economic independence.
Over the years, that sense of purpose took her to other territories and communities. She worked alongside women who had left armed groups as they rebuilt their lives and reclaimed their agency. More recently, she worked in Caquetá supporting coffee enterprises, particularly those led by rural women and young people.
Her work reached more than 1,000 people. But Sami reminded us that impact cannot be understood through numbers alone.
“To recognize that every day we create transformation and impact someone’s life is something I learned and that stayed with me. It means thinking more about the impact on people’s realities than about indicators. Indicators can lead us to act within limited parameters and, at times, to leave humanity aside.”
Sandra Milena Martínez Cortés
For Sami, beyond every measure of impact were people and their stories.
The Colombia she imagined
During her time in the Fellows Program, Sami once described her cohort as “a small Colombia.” A community of people from different territories, experiences, and perspectives, who could come together, question their own assumptions, and learn from one another.
Sami deeply valued those differences. Perhaps because she had lived Colombia’s fractures so intimately, she understood that peace was much more than the absence of violence. For Sami, building peace meant healing relationships, learning to encounter people whose stories were different from our own, and creating new possibilities for restoring trust.
Her vision of reconciliation was not simply an idea. It was a practice in her daily work with women, young people, rural communities, farmers, survivors of the conflict, and people who had once belonged to armed groups. She called it her purpose of service. “Once we understand that we have a purpose, an objective, we can rebuild and create different realities for our country.”
Sami was a woman, a social leader, a survivor of armed conflict, a peacebuilder, a friend, a daughter, a sister, and a mother.
Her story confronts us with a reality Colombia has yet to overcome. Those working in their territories to strengthen communities, defend rights, and build peace continue to face unacceptable risks. Women who lead face additional vulnerabilities tied to their gender, their ethnicity, and the roles they hold within their communities.
Colombia does not offer guarantees for its social leaders. For decades, hundreds of social leaders and human rights defenders have been killed in the country—a violence that affects not only those who suffer it directly, but also the communities and the processes of transformation those people lead.
Honoring Sami’s memory therefore also means refusing to normalize this reality. No one should have to risk their life to serve their community. No woman should face greater vulnerability because she chooses to lead. And no one working toward the country’s reconciliation should become a victim of the very violence they are trying to overcome.
“One step at a time”
Sami knew that deep transformation takes time. She spoke about recognizing our vulnerability, seeing our experiences through new eyes, and giving ourselves the chance to learn and change. Faced with the challenges that seemed hardest, her way forward was simple: “one step at a time.”
For nearly two years, those words took on a new meaning for our community. One step at a time, we held on to hope.
From the moment Sami disappeared, the Acumen community in Colombia, her cohort, and a broad network of allies mobilized alongside her family to find her. They knocked on doors, activated networks, worked to bring her case into the media, and turned to national institutions and international bodies with the shared hope of finding Sami and returning her home.
Sadly, the outcome was not the one so many people had hoped and worked for. But in that collective effort, we saw something Sami had stood for throughout her life: the power of people when they choose to act together, to accompany one another, and to remain present even when answers do not come.
There are many ways to remember Sami.
We can remember her as the woman who loved to dance salsa, “and anything else they play for me.” As someone who transformed her experience as a survivor of conflict into a determination to build peace. As the leader who helped other women recognize their worth, discover their capabilities, and build autonomy. As the Fellow who found a family in her cohort and who, in turn, left a profound mark on it.
But above all, we want to remember how Sami understood leadership. A leadership that listens, that recognizes the dignity of others, that believes vulnerability and strength can coexist, that builds bridges across differences to create community; that transforms through the “simple.”
Today, a community of more than 200 people in Colombia shares the weight of profound grief and a question that is difficult to answer: how to live and imagine the future in Sami’s absence. In the midst of that grief, we can return to what she taught us: that the deepest transformations begin with listening, being present, valuing others, and connecting our purpose with what the world needs.
Honoring her memory means keeping that understanding of leadership alive and continuing to build the Colombia Sami imagined. One where reconciliation grows from our capacity to recognize ourselves in one another, and where leading and serving a community can be done with dignity and freedom, without fear.
We know that does not happen overnight. It is built in the social fabric Sami dedicated her life to strengthening and in our capacity to keep believing, even in the most difficult moments, that a different reality is possible.
As Sami herself reminded us: one step at a time.
More from our Knowledge Hub
Un paso a la vez: En memoria de Sandra Milena Martínez
Sami dedicó su vida a construir paz en Colombia. En memoria de una Fellow de Acumen 2021 y del liderazgo que ejerció un paso a la vez.
