The Greater West Bloomfield Community Coalition has always had a mission of helping to reduce risky behavior in teens through community partnerships and education. The task of leading that mission now passes from retiring Executive Director Lisa Berkey to successor Kristen Schoenbeck, who brings her own unique strengths to the job.

After 13 years as the Coalition’s leader, Berkey looks back at the partnerships forged with schools and various organizations to help steer young people away from regrettable directions.

“We are still drug and alcohol focused – prevention, but we’re kind of going at it from the back end, and we’re providing kids from elementary, middle and high school with healthy coping mechanisms,” Berkey said. “We’re really teaching them how to manage the situations that are going to come up.”

Some of those mechanisms include teaching the kids mindfulness, meditation, breathing, and also providing them with coping bags.

Berkey points to the coalition’s Kids in Charge program, which offers prevention education for elementary and middle school students.

“Every program that we teach in Kids in Charge, we have coping skills, refusal skills and safe and trusted adults,” Berkey said. “It’s a consistent message, from first grade to eighth grade.”

True success, though, requires parental involvement. Berkey believes Schoenbeck’s skills as an event coordinator/planner can lead to progress on that front.

“Kristen stood out, way above the rest,” Berkey said, noting that, “she has all the energy and the ideas, and the board keeps repeating how lucky we are.”

Schoenbeck, a Waterford resident, has a background in management and event planning, both in the profit and nonprofit sectors. And it’s not lost on her the shoes she’s stepping into.

“Lisa has built an incredible coalition,” Schoenbeck said. “I get to stand on her shoulders, because she has done so much of the hard work – the relationship building, connecting to the needs of the school districts, connecting the right speakers for the right groups. She really cares that the kids are connecting.”

One of Schoenbeck’s top priorities is to develop a youth action board.

“I’d love to get kids involved in the high school and middle school level,” she said. “I want their input. I want them to run things. I want to know what they see in their schools. I want to give them ability to do things for change and make an impact.”

She also intends on tapping into her background in event planning.

“I love experiential events,” she said. “And I would really like to come up with some cool events for the kids that would engage them in activities and fun things that teaches them prevention skills and educates them about drugs and alcohol, and the other things that are out there, but not by having them necessarily sit in a classroom and have someone tell them.”

As the Coalition undergoes this transition, Berkey gets to focus on being a first-time grandma and running her home-based baking company, Goldie’s Mandel Bread. The product, Berkey stresses, is not actually bread but biscotti-like cookies made with cinnamon, sugar and chocolate chips.

And she can do so knowing the Coalition is left in good hands.

For more information on the GWBCC, visit https://www.gwbcoalition.org/. For more information about Goldie’s Mandel Bread, visit https://goldiesmandelbread.com/.