By Reid Spagna

Sara Leand knows how the cookie crumbles.

Fun, quirky and unique are a few of the descriptions that have been applied to the West Side mother’s gourmet dessert business, based in Manhattan.

Sara Leand with her daughter Lily in the kitchen.

As CEO of Sara Snacker Cookie Company, her delectable delicacies have been featured on The Rachael Ray Show and can be found in gourmet grocery stores all over the city, including Zabar’s, Gourmet Garage and Amish Market.

Leand’s interest in baking first blossomed in New Jersey with an Easy-Bake Oven and the help of her mother and grandmother.

It continued at the University of Arizona, where she obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Television Production and frequently hosted dinner parties that featured her homemade cookies.

“My friends always said, ‘You should try to sell the cookies,’” she said. “I thought it was a joke at first.”

Leand soon took their advice, however, and started baking cookies in her dorm room, packaging them with Saran wrap and printed stickers.

That original cookie business was sidelined to focus on academics but was finally re-started three years ago, after Leand spent over a decade in Los Angeles working for Paramount Pictures and as an agent for production companies. During the last five years of her career, Leand produced shows on E!, Lifetime and TLC.

It was after Leand left L.A. for New York that she began baking again. Pregnant with her first child and stressed by an ongoing job search, she decided to fire her cookie business back up.

“I always knew that I was going to go back to baking, but I didn’t think it was going to be right then. I thought it was going to be when I was a grandmother,” Leand said.

Retooling her dorm-room entrepreneurship into a full-fledged business, Leand wanted her company to have an original flair.

“My husband always joked that my chocolate chip cookie was so great,” Leand said. “As nice as that is, I didn’t want it to be the 100th cookie on the shelf, so I played around with a unique combination of ingredients.”

Her experimenting produced the Chipn’etzel, a sweet and salty cookie that combines potato chips with pretzels. She created the snack as an alternative for children with nut allergies.

The company sells a variety of other treats, including CandyPop Cookies, a cookie containing lollipop bits and topped with a gumball, Apple Hand Pies, miniature apple pies, and homemade Tootsie Rolls.

“The cookies are for younger kids as well as parents that remember the taste of their childhood,” she said.

Leand has trouble picking a favorite among her creations.

“Honestly, I love the T.W.ookie [The World’s Best Cookie], the Vanilla Milkshake, Lemonade Cookies, and the Chipn’etzels are close to my heart.”

Leand’s family has been her biggest supporters. Her husband is her official taste-tester, while her 14-month-old daughter always finds her way into photo shoots and work-related events.

“She knows where the cookie room is now, because the dining room has turned into the cookie room,” Leand said. “As soon as she goes in, she knows that she’s going to get a lot of treats. It’s very exciting for her.”

Even with the massive amount of work that it takes to create the sweet treats, Leand said that she places an emphasis on her family and their well-being.

“I definitely think that you can have a healthy balance,” she said. “You can have a cookie but you don’t have to eat all of the cookies. You don’t have to overindulge all of the time.”

As the old saying goes, “A well-balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.”

“I grew-up in the country and we always had animals, especially dogs and cats,” she said. “I always had a tremendous affinity for animals, I loved being around them. They make me happy.”

Buoyed by her passion for animal welfare, Obernesser moved to Italy to study before relocating to New York City in 1991. She worked as a veterinary technician and completed her pre-vet studies at Queens College. Along the way, Obernesser met her husband, James Weeks, while on vacation in Yucatan, Mexico in 1989.

In 2004, she received her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine in St. Kitts. Following a couple of years of private veterinary practice

James Weeks and Dr. Ina Obernesser, Uptown Veterinary Associates. Photo by Daniel S. Burnstein

in New York City and Westchester, Obernesser opened Uptown Vets in 2007 with the help of her the help of her husband, who is a construction manager.

“I love interacting with animals and their owners,” Obernesser said. “I love to educate people on how to better take care of animals.”

Although Uptown Vets has been open for a relatively short time, Obernesser said she truly feels community support for her practice.

“We were unbelievably welcomed to this community. People are just so happy that we’re in the neighborhood,” she said. “It makes a big difference to have a reliable vet in the neighborhood.”

Pet owner Sherri Laurence seems to agree.

“I have been going to Dr. Obernesser for a few years now and I can honestly say that she is one of the best vets that I have ever gone to,” Laurence said. “She loves all animals as if they were her own.”

Weeks said, “I’m glad that Ina’s work is being recognized because she deserves it. She works her butt off, often putting in between 70 and 80 hours per week.”

Obernesser adds that her staff is extremely dedicated and passionate when it comes to quality care for pets.

“What we’re trying to convey to people here is that we’re not just here to make a living,” she said. “We have to make a living, but we truly care about what we do and I think it shows.”

In addition to her daily practice, Obernesser also makes her pet rescue work a priority. Some of the groups she works with include New York Pet Rescue and the Mexican-based Isla Animals. She helps these organizations to spay, neuter and rescue unwanted dogs and cats in the United States, Canada and Mexico. She has a rescued beagle and a Mexican rescue named Pancho.

Ruth Frumkin, of Pet Rescue in New York, called Obernesser a “wonderful vet” who makes a tremendous difference.

“If we did not have Ina as a vet, we would be in a lot of trouble,” Frumkin said. “She is more than generous when it comes to helping our Pet Rescue organization and the animals we bring to her.”

Rubin grew up playing soccer on the Upper West Side. Back then, he and his friends settled for any patch of grass in Riverside Park that was large enough to kick around a soccer ball. When the West Side Soccer League was launched, offering the first opportunity for organized soccer in the neighborhood, Rubin, then 6, was part of its inaugural season. His passion for the sport remained with him through high school and took him to Colorado, where he played for the Colorado College men’s soccer team before returning to New York.

That same soccer league that consisted of only a handful of teams when Rubin joined more than 20 years ago now offers services to 4,000-plus children and 8,000 parent volunteers.

Zachary Rubin, Upper 90 Soccer + Sport. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Seeing this burgeoning soccer community, Rubin and his business partners, Wilson Edigio and Doug Gatanis, decided to open their sporting goods on West 94th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, just blocks from where Rubin grew up on West 89th Street.

“There’s been a need for a sports store on the Upper West Side, specifically a soccer store for years,” Rubin said. “It’s just never been met. People are always running all over the city to find very simple items that bringing them to the Upper West Side could be both a service to the community and successful business-wise. We’re filling a huge need. Soccer’s really taken hold up here.”

Upper 90 had its grand opening on Sept. 10. Though the business is still new, support from shoppers and the neighborhood has been tremendous, Rubin said. If growth continues as expected, Rubin plans to open two more stores downtown and in Brooklyn.

Around the same time that Rubin and Edigio began working on Upper 90, they decided to collaborate on another new business, Brazilian Touch Soccer. The goal is to bring American high school and college teams to Brazil to train with professional players and coaches. Wanting to offer the same kind of benefits to local soccer players, they also created Brazilian Touch Soccer School, which incorporates the coaching methods they learned in Brazil into their Upper West Side program.

“Very few programs exist that use real coaching methods to develop fundamentals at a very young age,” Rubin said. “I coach premiere travel for the Manhattan Soccer Club, and seeing the players come up who, at age 11, have never really been coached properly, it necessitates better programs for younger ages.”

For Rubin, deciding to start his new ventures on the West Side was about more than just business. Through his ties to the soccer community as a player, coach and entrepreneur, he’s witnessed how soccer works as a vehicle for positive change in the lives of city kids. Part of how he measures his professional success is in his ability to contribute to the two communities he feels close ties to: the Upper West Side and soccer.

“We’re really trying to support various endeavors and parts of the community,” Rubin said. “We’re trying to run a business and be successful from that end, but we’re also trying to create a place there that the community will rally around and support for years to come.”

Pat Craddick left Wall Street to spend more time with her daughter, a public school student. But she discovered that her support was also needed elsewhere: many public school parents were missing a place where they could learn to write resumes, prep for interviews and look for jobs.

So Craddick created ParentJobNet, a nonprofit organization that provides public school parents with various career advancement services.

“The mission is to prepare, educate and connect parents of public school children with job opportunities and to help them become financially self-sufficient so their children can succeed in school and outside of the

Pat Craddick plans to expand her nonprofit, ParentJobNet, throughout the city and eventually across the country. Photo By: Andrew Schwartz

school,” Craddick said.

She started the website in 2004 out of a local Starbucks with just her cell phone and laptop. The program has since expanded into more than 100 schools in the Upper West Side, Harlem and Washington Heights. Craddick hopes to bring ParentJobNet to the rest of the city and nation, but she is taking it slow—she wants to make sure each neighborhood and school gets the right resources.

ParentJobNet has four basic programs, and all are free to public school parents and caregivers. AccessClassifieds gives parents a place to look for a job or post an employment offer. Parents can also look for work at AccessNetworking events. There are two types—a formal wine and cheese gathering, and a casual coffeehouse meeting—and attendees are an eclectic bunch, from Harvard MBAs to stay-at-home moms, Craddick said.

For parents who are new to the workforce, AccessTraining helps them through the entire process, from resume writing and interviewing techniques to budgeting and credit management. Another program, AccessEnglish, helps parents who are non-English speakers.

“We take a holistic view in terms of help and to better the lives of parents,” Craddick said. “Because bottom line is, if a parent is out of a job, the child feels it.”

Dana Mindlin is program director at ParentJobNet. Like Craddick, she came from the corporate world, but the transition has been easy because of Craddick’s support.

“The more I work with her, the more I respect her,”Mindlin said.

For Craddick, one of the best parts of ParentJobNet is that it operates directly in New York City public schools.

“We’re trying to get parents to be more engaged in schools. That way, they can help their children, they can feel more comfortable coming to school,” she said. “We make it friendly.”

And while her current work is very different from her previous job on Wall Street, Craddick welcomes the change.

“My family and I, we go away, we like to travel, and I take my computer when I need to work. I sit by the beach or wherever,” she said. “That’s the beauty of it because I don’t like to be tied down in a nine-to-five job.”