About A. Darius Husain: 

As an Irish, German, Pakistani whose father claimed that part of their ancestry could be traced to Ghangis Khan, Darius is a patchwork of generational contradictions uniquely positioning him to uncover humanities common ground.  Through his service as Executive Director of Face to Face Academy, a school renowned for reengaging the most at-risk for dropping out of school, Darius’ students taught him that having the courage to tell our stories reveals the dignity inherent within all us.  Darius brings this perspective in his works as educator, podcast host, and writer including the Reader’s Favorite award-winning book, “Road Map to Power.”

Personal Life

Darius was born and raised in Columbia, Missouri.  His Minnesota adventure began when he attended St. John’s University and almost ended the first-time his friends convinced him to walk across a frozen lake.  Twenty-five years later, he finds himself fully acclimated to life in the North Country frequently cross-country skiing and occasionally ice fishing.  Darius currently lives in the Saint Paul area with his life and educational partner, Jennifer, and their daughter, Ava.

Career of Service

Darius Husain has served as the Executive Director of Face to Face Academy since 2007.  The school is considered the last, best hope for marginalized youth to reengage in the educational experience and chart a path to healthy, fulfilling lives.  Darius’ tenure as Director has been marked with the Academy being named a “High Quality Charter School” by the Minnesota Department of Education,  Newsweek’s identifying Face to Face as one of America’s Top High Schools Beating the Odds, and the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools (MACS) honoring the honoring the staff with an Innovation Award.  The school’s Wilderness & Outdoor Program has received many recognitions including a  “Best Practice” by the Minnesota Department of Education, “Environmental Sustainability” by the St. Paul City Council, and is featured in an Emmy winning episode of the popular nature show, Minnesota Bound.   

Mr. Husain also led the school community through a global pandemic and fostered a meaningful and creative learning environments through online, hybrid, and in-person instruction.  The Academy was one of the first schools to reopen its doors in July 2020 and through a collaborative process with a talented and experienced staff created the Equitable Access Learning Model (EALM), a flexible and responsive instructional method dubbed “the school of the future.”

Mr. Husain has written about and presented on a variety of educational topics including innovative metrics used to evaluate student test data and graduation rates, strategies for increasing math and reading proficiency, best fiscal practices, environmental education, addressing compassion fatigue among staff in urban schools, and the importance of building meaningful relationships to supercharge student achievement.  He is the member of numerous committees centering on education and student mental health and was a two-term Board Chair of MACS.

In June of 2024, Darius received Saint John’s Alumni Achievement Award for his career success and service to the community.

A Note to the Reader — My Journey as a Writer

An assignment in my eighth grade Human Anatomy class is the closest I have to an origin story for my writing career.  I was supposed to complete a research paper on a genetic disorder and instead I wrote a twelve-page short story on a woman contemplating death as she succumbs to sickle cell anemia.   Nary a single scientific fact in the work, I justifiably received a 40 out of 100.  My teacher – God bless her soul – awarded me 50 extra credit points for my effort, bringing my grade to an “A”.  If she had failed me, perhaps my lifelong love to tell stories would have stalled before liftoff.

In college, I developed some status with my peers as an essay whisperer.  My friends would pop in an out of my dorm and after a 30-minute session, their papers could be taken off life support.  In true capitalist fashion, I would trade this skill for laundry or extra punches at the dining hall.  I was also the annoying kid in class who asked the teacher how long the essay should be.  When the answer would come back “a minimum of five pages,” I would clarify by saying, “no, how long can it be?”  I was the rare student who widen his margins and shrunk the font size to stay within the limits.

A year out of college, I scored a job at Face to Face Academy that paid me $23,000 to work with some of the toughest kids in Saint Paul.  To celebrate their graduations, I wrote one-act-plays that the staff would perform at the ceremony.  The most memorable was spoof on the Christmas Carol staring a giant clock wearing Flavor Flav doing triple duty as the ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.  I am not making this up . . .

My parents – as with all aspects of my life – were my greatest advocates of my fledging writing career.  My mother is famous for her profound and moving letters that have found a modern context with her frequent three paragraph texts.  My father exhausted nearly two decades convincing me to make a serious effort to becoming an author.  He finally broke through by having me help him with a book, “he always wanted to write,” that eventually became Road Map to Power.  Like all his endeavors, the project wasn’t about him as he harbored a more altruistic objective: it was about instilling in his son the discipline to craft 100,000 published worthy words.

After a two-year illness, my father passed away at the age of eight-four.  He was my biggest influence, and his loss was devasting.  I quickly learned that I felt closest to him not looking at a picture or even at his gravestone, but when I sit at my computer and compose.  Now I write like my fingers are on fire.  For in the stories that pour from our hearts, we remain connected to those we love most.  And perhaps along the way we discover a little bit about ourselves and this wild adventure we call life.