Dana DiPrima wears many hats; she is a mother, a wife and the commissioner of the West Side Soccer League since 2005.

As the commissioner, she oversees the league, which has over 4,000 neighborhood youths ranging from 5 to 18 years old. There are nearly 400 teams, with 800 coaches and 500 referees. In addition to learning how to play soccer, the league offers numerous programs to benefit the children’s experience.

“We get to practice and use the fields in Riverside Park, Central Park, Randall’s Island and other fields,” DiPrima said.

Some programs include training from professional coaches and the opportunity to see the New York Red Bulls.

With the belief that everyone deserves a chance to learn soccer, the league offers assistance to families that have financial difficulties. “Around 25 percent of the members have scholarships, paying $10,” said DiPrima.

She explained that “to learn soccer, you have to play soccer,” so the league tries to make sure that everyone participates to the same extent.

Any time there is an issue, such as unfair game time, she explained that people come to her to have the problem solved. It shows how the league and parents want everyone to have the same advantages, and that the WSSL is serious about educating the youths.

The league also gives back to the community. “We leave the nets and goals in the park for the public to use, when we are not using them,” she said.

Soccer has always been one of DiPrima’s favorite sports. She started playing as a child and continued through college. “It normally brings the best of people,” she explained.

DiPrima, 45, said she enjoys the great people she has met—from CEOs to the unemployed, they all share a common thing, their love for soccer.

Not only is the WSSL a great opportunity for children, but it also gives adults who are passionate about soccer a chance to volunteer as referees and coach teams. DiPrima explained that many of the parents remain active in the league even after their children leave.

Her daughter, 11, is still a part of the West Side Soccer League, and has just returned from the WSSL Red Bulls Travel Team. Children on the travel team compete with other travel teams in the area and are coached by New York Red Bulls trainers.

It may seem a little intimidating juggling all the duties of a mom (she also has a son, 14), wife and the commissioner of the WSSL, but DiPrima explained that her family is very understanding, and if there is issue that needs her attention, her husband or children will let her know.

“I love New York. I love the Upper West Side and I love West Side Soccer. I am very honored and this award recognizes everyone else that is involved, working together towards the same goal,” stated a grateful DiPrima.

A museum-going love for the fine arts, incisive curiosity, intellectual rigor—these are not traits immediately associated with successful shoe salesmanship. Robert Goldberg puts them to good use, however, as the current scion of a family that, for three generations, has brought the Upper West Side one of its favorite retail businesses, Harry’s Shoes.

On a recent day at the store, Goldberg, 49, a self-proclaimed “low-key guy,” wore glove-soft leather loafers with no socks and a calm expression, despite the surrounding bustle. With his relaxed demeanor and quiet intensity, there’s no doubt he inherited his father’s enthusiasm, though perhaps from a different angle.

“I’ve always had a fascination with people’s different perceptions historically, with learning many different points of view,” said Goldberg, who studied political science and art history at Vassar. “There’s also a curiosity about how people achieve creativity through their workmanship. I love the concepts of footwear patterns and last shapes and how they express fashion or function.” He adds that he takes an “almost academic” approach, always striving to increase his knowledge, which gets him excited and makes him better at his job.

“I’m impassioned about this business,” he said. “I’m just a very interested party, highly motivated when it comes to understanding the product itself and also consumer trends. I love what I do. There’s a lot of emotion, a lot of pride, a lot of enjoyment.”

Goldberg’s grandfather Harry founded the business in the Bronx in 1931. His father Joseph opened a branch in Manhattan in 1975. A modest giant among footwear retailers, Joseph was a beloved community figure, kind mentor and common-sense philosopher who passed down much wisdom and shoe-selling savvy. He had a knack not only for connecting with customers but for recognizing trends and promoting sales.

“My father and I built this business together,” said his son. “He was already here, obviously, but we took it to the next level.”

Outgrowing their original store at 83rd and Broadway, they opened a kids’ branch half a block north then hatched plans to expand the main shop from 2,800 to 6,800 square feet and transform it into a sleek 21st-century emporium. Joseph stayed active in the business into his eighties, working there frequently until just a few weeks before his death in March. Sadly, he did not live to see its reopening in early September, though he could go to his grave knowing his legacy was secure.

“My father was my life coach,” said Goldberg. “That about sums it up. He was the best man at my wedding. He was a very close, dear friend, a wonderful man and a great consigliere. Anyone who knew him loved him. He was a really great guy, and he’s sorely missed.”

By the time Goldberg went to work for his father at 23, he had already amassed considerable experience. During high school and college summers, he sold shoes at Stadler Florsheim and Barney’s. After graduation, he enrolled in the management training program at Macy’s. “When you’re in a small business,” he said, “you do everything: You sell, you do stock work, you manage the floor. When I first came to work for my dad, I was already well-versed in all that. So it was a natural transition.”

It’s too soon to tell whether Harry’s great-grandchildren will carry on the legacy. Goldberg’s sister, Randi Goldberg Wasserman, helps run the business; they each have two children—all school age.

“Randi and I would both be thrilled if future generations take over,” he said. “But it would have to be their decision because it’s a business of passion. You do it because you want to, because you’re interested, you enjoy people, you enjoy the product, you want to study it, you want to learn.”

Marc Murphy is the successful owner of Benchmarc Restaurants, with six restaurant and catering locations across the city, a board member of the nonprofit charity City Harvest, and has been a judge and competitor on cooking competition TV shows like Chopped and Iron Chef America.

But despite a well-earned place among New York gourmet culinary masters, Murphy says that he is, and has always been, a believer in family-friendly community restaurants.
“My restaurants are based around neighborhoods,” said Murphy. “I want Mary down the street to know Joe the bartender.”

At each of Murphy’s restaurant locations—Landmarc in Tribeca and the Time Warner Center, and Ditch Plains in the West Village, Brooklyn Bridge Pier and the Upper West Side—community members have the option to call for takeout. Murphy’s staff also keeps kids’ menus and high chairs on hand, which is something that not many gourmet chefs are willing to do, he said.

“People always thank me for allowing them to go out to dinner with their children,” said Murphy. “We’re a very busy city, and it’s nice to be able to have families sit around the table.”

Murphy also tries to keep a neighborhood-friendly atmosphere in his restaurants by catering to his regulars. He recalled one incident at his Tribeca restaurant location when he and his staff gifted a onesie, patterned with the Landmarc logo, to a pregnant regular customer.

After graduating from the Institute of Culinary Education, Murphy worked as a chef at the famed Windows on the World and La Forchette. In 2004, he opened his first solo project, the French-Italian restaurant Landmarc. As with all of his culinary projects, Murphy focused on “approachable cuisine” for everyday occasions. In 2006, he started Ditch Plains, which serves up beach-style dishes, and now has three locations. These days, Murphy is most successful with Benchmarc, his catering company in Tribeca.

Murphy also serves on the board of City Harvest, a nonprofit charity that collects food from the city’s restaurants and grocery stores, and redistributes it to the city’s homeless and hungry population.

In September, the Ditch Plains Upper West Side location participated in Dine Out Week, and for every kids’ meal bought, one dollar was donated to Share Our Strength, a nationally recognized organization that raises awareness of childhood hunger.

“I just can’t stand that people go hungry in this city,” said Murphy.

Most recently in 2011, Murphy opened up a Ditch Plains on West 82nd Street. Each restaurant location, he said, has its own personality based on the surrounding neighborhood. But all of his restaurants have at least one common factor: great service.

The secret to being a great restaurateur is in the attention to every detail, he said, and taking the time to train his employees to run things smoothly when he is away.
“I would tell my managers, we hire nice people first, and then we can teach them how to wait tables later,” said Murphy. “It’s about getting the staff to care as much as I do.”

Missi Gibbs has volunteered at Roosevelt Hospital for so many years, she’s forgotten when she started. “I don’t even know,” she said. “It’s been over 30 years!”

Gibbs, who turns 75 in November, is receiving a Westy award for her volunteer work.

“We are so lucky to have her here with us,” said Kathleen Dalton, director of volunteer services at St. Luke’s and Roosevelt Hospitals. Dalton, who has known Gibbs for more than seven years, described her as an invaluable member of the hospitals’ volunteer team

“We all have whatever blessings we have, which really aren’t because of us. And so what we can do is give back,” Gibbs said on a recent Saturday in her apartment on West 81st Street. She first started volunteering at Roosevelt after her priest recommended it. “I got the names from the chaplain’s office of people who frequently did not have visitors,” she said.

At that time, hospital stays tended to be longer, Gibbs explained. “If someone had a stroke, they’d stay there for weeks.” After work, she visited patients, keeping them company. “I really, really loved it because I met interesting people,” she said. She later volunteered in the hospital gift shop and served as treasurer for the St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Associate Trustees.

Currently, Gibbs volunteers every Friday as an ambulatory surgery liaison, facilitating communication between patients’ families and the medical staff. Then on Mondays she works in the maternity unit helping to escort families after they are discharged.

In addition to volunteering at Roosevelt, she is the chairperson of the beneficiaries committee of St. George’s Society of NY, an organization assisting local elderly and disabled residents who have a British and Commonwealth heritage. She is also a former board member of the Manhattan Plaza Foundation, which sponsored HIV and AIDS support programs.

Born in Pennsylvania, Gibbs grew up outside of Chicago. After attending Sweet Briar College in Virginia for two years, she transferred to Katharine Gibbs in New York when it was a secretarial school. “Back in the days when you wore hats and white gloves,” she said.

After graduation, she returned to Chicago for her first job at Life magazine. “I worked for the merchandizing manager and had lots of fun,” she said. Gibbs later moved back to New York with her husband. “When my feet hit New York, I knew this is where I’m staying forever and ever and ever,” she said. A mother of a son and a daughter, she remained in the city after her divorce.

She is generous with her time as well as her three-bedroom apartment, which she shares with her 23-year-old granddaughter as well as a Romanian pianist she describes as her “adopted” adult son.

“He needed a place to stay and the cats liked him,” she explained. (Gibbs adopted her two cats, Poopster and Sister Susie.) Two of her granddaughter’s friends have also been staying at the apartment temporarily. “I am currently running Granny’s flophouse,” she said.

Now 39, Levi has been the director of community life activities at Jewish Home Lifecare, which provides health care services for seniors on the Upper West Side.

She recalls moving to New York from Southfield, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, when she was only 20.

“I love the city, with all its many resources at your fingertips. You can go to the theater, parks or museums; really anything you want,” Levi said. “I think the accessibility of the city is really great.”

Some of Levi’s key responsibilities at the Jewish Home include overseeing recreational activities for more than 500 seniors in addition to helping organize a virtual army of 250-plus annual volunteers from community service groups, such as synagogues and churches.

“I’ve loved working with seniors since being a kid—I love being able to enrich their lives in a meaningful way and then to figure out the things seniors like to do and then find ways to make those things happen,” said Levi, who holds a master’s degree in health care management.

Discussing the role of volunteers, Levi recalls her own early volunteer experiences as a teen back in Michigan. “I started volunteering at a local Jewish nursing home in Southfield when I was only 15 and I found it very rewarding,” she says.

Recent examples of corporate volunteer groups included employees from Turner Broadcasting and UJA who came to donate their time to either help residents with tasks such as writing letters or using computers to send messages to relatives and loved ones.

“Our elders really benefit from these volunteer experiences,” Levis said. “The coordination of all the volunteer groups is a mutually beneficial arrangement because not only do our seniors benefit from the engagement and interaction with people, but the volunteers themselves learn a great deal and also gain tremendous satisfaction from helping people in their community.”

Further, Levi also serves as co-chair of a combined committee of union and staff members working to transition the home toward a new building on 96th Street in a few years in addition to a new type of self-directed care for elders dubbed “Green House.”

“I’ve worked hard with many different people to help manage this somewhat major transition,” Levi says.

Judith Nicholson, an administrator with Jewish Home Lifecare, counts herself lucky to have Levi as a colleague. “Miriam truly understands … how to brighten the lives of our elders while providing rich volunteer opportunities for our neighbors and surrounding community,” Nicholson said.

“I have had the pleasure of working with Miriam for many years and must tell you that I don’t know where she gets the time or energy to do it all—but I am certainly very, very grateful that she is here.”

Levi says that health care is forever changing.

“One of my biggest concerns,” she said, “is that we don’t forget about the elderly. If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing today.”

She relates how the home has been working to make better use of technology to keep its residents connected.

“We recently purchased iPads and have been working with college/school groups to teach our seniors how to use the iPads to send email and search the Internet,” Levi says. “We want our residents to do the same things everyone else is doing online.”

In 1971, James Davis, then about to graduate from City College of New York, was headed to a job on Wall Street when it fell through. When he went to the chair of his economics department, the idea came to study hospital administration, instead.

Through the 1970s, Davis worked at Roosevelt Island’s Coler-Goldwater Hospital and the Westchester Medical Center. Now, more 40 years later, Davis, 62, is president and CEO of Amsterdam Continuing Care Health System, which manages Amsterdam Nursing Home and two Long Island spin-offs.

“To be honest, I kind of fell into it, and I’m very grateful that I did,” he said.

Most of the nursing home’s 409 residents come from the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights and Harlem. The nursing home also offers an adult day health-care center for seniors to get meals, medical checkups and other services.

The nursing home, which faces the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, has a long history. The 140-year-old organization, originally the Home for Old Men and Aged Couples, moved uptown in 1896 and was rechristened Amsterdam Nursing Home in the 1970s alongside a major expansion. One of Davis’ first tasks in 1988 was to expand the original building and convert it into a health-care center to meet the needs of more frail or sick seniors.

“They come here because they need us,” he said.

But all is not quiet for Davis, because the nursing home is being hit with cuts to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, which he said make up more than 90 percent of Amsterdam’s revenue. He calls dealing with this part of his job “daunting.”

“It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the quality that we want to provide as a mission-driven not-for-profit in this environment,” he said. “It really is becoming a challenge.”

To meet some of that challenge, Davis is looking into cutting costs and sharing services with other nonprofits. But the main driver of Amsterdam House’s bottom line is a move to diversify into private-market retirement homes.

Davis said their original plan to build the second retirement community in Upper Manhattan was ended by the reality of skyrocketing real estate prices and luxury developers making it too expensive to expand.

Instead, he looked to Long Island. The retirement community Amsterdam at Harborside opened in 2010 in Nassau County, and they’re building a second facility in Suffolk with help from a state grant. Profits go back into the Manhattan facility.

“There’s no question business as usual isn’t going to work anymore,” he said.

State Sen. Tom Duane, who represents much of Manhattan’s West Side, met Davis in the late 1990s. He said he has friends and relatives at Amsterdam Nursing Home.
“If I won the lottery, I would buy some place in Manhattan where he could open up a continuing care retirement community in New York, because I have the same peace of mind that I have about his facilities— that’s the same trust I have in his ability to make things happen,” said Duane.

In 2008, Davis and his wife moved to the Upper West Side from Westchester. He said he enjoys the neighborhood’s diversity and community, especially walking to work. He’s also an avid golfer, when he doesn’t work.

Still, much of his time is divided between Amsterdam Home, checking up on the progress of the new communities in Long Island and going to Albany to “hammer away on reimbursement.”

“The bottom line is, it’s an enormous responsibility to take care of a lot of people and to take care of the employees who take care of them—and that challenge is what keeps me going,” he said.

Coco Sellman never thought the day would come.

On vacation in Costa Rica with her husband, Frank, last summer, she couldn’t help but crack a smile when her Blackberry started vibrating.

It was an email from her stepdaughter, Amelia, who wanted to know how the trip was going and when they would be back home. It was the first time that Amelia had ever sent an email on her own, marking a major milestone in the 11-year-old’s life.

Diagnosed with cerebral palsy at an early age, Amelia is like many of the 16 students who attend Standing Tall on West 69th Street and Riverside Drive. A year-round program for children ages 5 -15 with neuromotor disorders and severe physical disabilities, Standing Tall has offered a personalized approach to education and cognitive development since 1997.

And Coco Sellman is standing at the forefront of the school’s future.

In just two years as executive director of Standing Tall, she has helped double the student population. During that time the school has grown to include a new office at 89th St. and Columbus Avenue and hopes to move into new office space in Harlem this spring to expand to 20 students.

Sellman, initially involved with Standing Tall on a voluntary basis, worked unpaid as an executive while handling the school’s day-to-day operations for 12 months before she was hired.

“Coco does it all. If there’s a problem, we go to her. She’s a problem solver and a great communicator. She understands the kids and understands their needs,” said Tabitha Pease, a fellow Standing Tall employee.

Sellman hopes to find a 10,000-square-foot building for Standing Tall to call home by 2015. Currently scouting locations on 113th Street and Lennox Avenue, she also spends countless hours hosting and organizing fundraising events across the city.

One of those events, the “More for More” golf tournament in Old Saybrook, Conn., hauled in $80,000 for the school while the annual NYC Marathon raised another $75,000 with more than 30 sponsored runners.

Although the annual funds need of $250,000 for 2012 has already been met, Sellman refuses to settle for complacency. She recently set a goal for $2 million in fundraising over the next three years and is in the process of the launching a major gift campaign to help fund financial aid flexibility for parents.

“Our long-term perspective is to first understand that there are 1,500 students in New York City with similar disabilities and similar needs. And there are 1.5 million in this country. The need to grow is here, now,” Sellman said. “We have one lucky program, and have to do whatever is possible to have this available to more kids.”

Sellman hasn’t just given Standing Tall the legs to walk on its own. She’s given it a marathon to run, and win, over the next decade.

But it wouldn’t have been possible without Amelia, she says.

“Amelia is an amazingly bright, smart and fun person that most people don’t get to experience,” Sellman said. “As incredibly witty and smart as she is, I can’t imagine being in her body being unable to do the things she is unable to do. It just troubles me to know that people brush it off as such a small group. There are kids everywhere like this who people don’t pay a lot of attention to. It breaks my heart.”

The first thing you notice about Nancy Easton is the sparkle in her eyes and then the crinkle in her smile, sure signs of the eternal optimist who won’t take no for an answer and relishes a tough challenge.

Easton’s mission, through Wellness in the Schools, a nonprofit she founded in 2005, is not only to promote the notion that improved diet and exercise lead to better academic achievement and enhanced individual potential, but to put it into practice. Easton acts as the “coach”—the program’s teaching face and athletics consultant—and Bill Telepan as “cook”—its chief of sourcing, developing and implementing new school lunch recipes.

“It’s the passion and energy that Nancy brings to this project that makes it work,” said Telepan, known for his eponymous restaurant on West 69th Street. “There are a lot of roadblocks, but she doesn’t let them stop her.”

Telepan and Easton met as fellow parents at P.S. 87 and she soon convinced him to join WITS, which now operates in 40 New York City public schools as well as 14 in Kentucky and Florida.

Easton, 46, has the lithe physique and buoyant stride of the elite college athlete she once was: Recruited to play soccer at Princeton, she also ran track, setting a school record at 800 meters and anchoring a 4 x 800 relay team at the national championships.

After earning her master’s degree at Bank Street, Easton taught at I.S. 370 on the Lower East Side, where 99 percent of students were at poverty level and many struggled: “They would walk into the school with a bottle of soda and a bag of chips for breakfast. Then they ate a processed meal for lunch. The same kids couldn’t focus in class, couldn’t walk a flight of stairs without catching their breath. This was the ’90s and no one was really talking about it at the time

“We were kids teaching young kids,” said Easton, a Miami-area native. “We would take them biking after school or hiking on weekends, and they couldn’t keep up. It was just so bizarre to me, as someone who grew up running around.”

Easton’s family ate figs and mangoes from their backyard. Her mother tended garden and put health food on the table; friends and neighbors called her “Nature Lady.” Easton’s father is a self-made man who started with a dry-cleaning business and eventually became a successful real estate developer. “I attribute that positive can-do attitude to him. If you wanted to do something, you were going to do it and do it well.”

Nancy the Eternal Optimist admits to an ingenuous false naiveté: When she’s trying to get to “yes,” she’ll often conveniently behave as if “no” doesn’t exist. Asked whether she needs a realist on staff for balance, she chuckles, “Yes, that would be Marjorie [Wolfson], our director of programs. I joke that when we’re crossing the street together and the sign says ‘Don’t Walk,’ she always stops and I just keep walking.”

But there’s more to it than just forging ahead: “If the cook in the kitchen or the woman who runs the school gives us feedback that it’s not going well, we don’t gloss it over. Listening to the problems and continuing to work through them is another important trait.

“It’s not just about changing lunch,” said Easton. “We need to talk about why we changed it, to cook with the kids, cook with the parents, teach them about nutrition, so they understand why they’re not getting chicken fingers.”

If it’s a nice day in New York City, Joseph Bolanos is probably sitting outside on his Upper West Side brownstone stoop.

Situated in the middle of the block on West 76th Street, Bolanos says it’s the perfect spot for neighbors to walk over, meet new people and talk about any issues they’re dealing with in the area.

“Some block associations hold meetings. I’m more old-fashioned,” he said.

Bolanos is the president of Landmark 76, the block association representing West 76th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West. In his role, he has earned the reputation as a community leader who identifies a problem and wastes no time in getting it fixed.

Recently, the street was faced with a rat infestation. Residents would gasp and scream as they encountered the large number of rats on the sidewalk at night, Bolanos said.

He tackled the problem by taking video of the rats and hanging yellow, diamond-shaped rat crossing signs in the area to bring attention to the problem. The action gained international media coverage, and Bolanos’ video recording appeared on various news sites.

Ken Biberaj, a City Council candidate who lives near the site where the rat infestation was most severe, said he has seen the rat situation improve dramatically since Bolanos’ signs went up.

“He’s hard-working, down to earth, and he’s about getting results,” said Biberaj, who nominated Bolanos for a Westy.

Bolanos, who declined to give his age, has been president of the association for 14 years. The Manhattan native moved to his West 76th Street home more than 35 years ago. He had a long career as a security consultant, which he now does part-time.

Never married, Bolanos admits to having lived half of his life “partying.” But he always had an instinct to fight for those in need. He received a police commendation for heroism in the early 1980s after an incident where he saved a young woman being robbed at knifepoint.

Bolanos, who was also a Red Cross volunteer after the Sept. 11 attacks, said his desire to help people might be in his DNA.

Fifteen years ago in a small village in El Salvador, he said he had an epiphany. Decades before, Bolanos’ father helped build a clinic for mentally ill patients, and on this day when Bolanos was visiting this village, an old man told him an emotional story of how the clinic transformed his son’s life. It was then that Bolanos realized he had inherited his father’s drive to make changes that matter.

One of Bolanos’ most important initiatives is ensuring the safety of his neighborhood. It’s another reason he likes to sit on his stoop.

“The best security is to know your neighbors,” he said. “I sit there and I love introducing people.”

Bolanos has helped his neighborhood with everything from helping residents get their heating fixed to successfully fighting the New-York Historical Society’s plan to build an apartment tower a few years ago, which he believes would have changed the character of the neighborhood.

He’s always busy as residents visit him with their concerns, but he loves his role in the community.

“There’s not a week that goes by that I don’t think this is a honor and a privilege,” he said. “It means people trust you.”

When most people think about activities for senior citizens, they think shuffleboard, bingo—maybe mahjong.

Karen Fuller’s mind goes elsewhere: gong therapy, laughter yoga, massage tai chi.

For the past 20 years, Karen Fuller has been enriching the lives of seniors through a wellness program at Dorot, an organization that alleviates social isolation among the elderly in the Jewish and wider community. Far from your average slate of senior pastimes, the program taps holistic medicine, alternative therapy and creative arts to keep Dorot’s clients happy and healthy.

Though Fuller herself built the program from the ground up, she is still surprised at times by how well the activities go over with clients.
“They seem amazingly open,” said Fuller. “They like things I never would have anticipated.”

Past classes have immersed Dorot clients in subjects such as sound therapy to smooth out stress, Shakespeare readings to aid memory and olfactory treatments that use flowers, herbs and essential oils. Speakers visit Dorot’s 85th Street location to give lessons on topics like cooking, flower arranging and yoga.

Fuller believes the program has shown that seniors are too often mislabeled as close-minded. Still, her co-workers know her way with people has helped Dorot clients take the leap from weight training to holistic healing.

“They really trust Karen, and although these ideas may be new to them, where she leads, they will follow. Because they know she’s genuinely interested in their well-being,” said Judy Ribnick, director of community services at Dorot.

Dorot seeks to help seniors live independently in their communitieswith quality of life. The organization works toward that mission through social services, including kosher meal delivery, and volunteer programs that bridge generations and provide the opportunity to make new friends.

Fuller found her way to Dorot after studying naturopathic medicine at Oregon’s National College of Natural Medicine and completing a master’s in social work at Columbia University. She worked in psychotherapy for eight years, including at Dorot, but she eventually made senior wellness her life’s work.

Inspired by Miriam Nelson’s book Strong Women Stay Young, Fuller created a program oriented for people 80 and older, who often face physical obstacles to staying fit. An initial class on prevention grew into Dorot’s senior wellness program, which now attracts seniors of all ages, varies for physical and cognitive ability and—perhaps most importantly—changes constantly.

“It’s very important to keep trying new things and getting introduced to opportunities to do something different,” said Fuller.

Fuller credits two women for instilling this mindset in her: her grandmother, whom she describes as a wonderful and open-minded person, and her mother, whose volunteerism imparted upon her a sense of service early on.

As a full-time staffer at Dorot, Fuller has created a career in community building. She sees the wellness program as a door to Dorot’s larger mission.

“It’s an opportunity to get connected, stay connected to community, to really grow and learn and have a good time,” said Fuller.