It’s time once again for Lehigh Valley Style to tip its hat to an incredible group of women. They don’t seek out the spotlight, but we’re shining it on them anyway, as our picks for the 2024 Influential Women of the Year. The selection process is never easy; the Lehigh Valley can boast of a bevy of changemakers, community anchors and boundary-pushers. But we feel the six women you’re about to meet are quite exceptional, each in their own way.
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Mary Griffin
FOUNDER THE CARING PLACE
"When the kids come in, we tell them that we are committed to them for life.”
A career change catalyst can take many forms. For Mary Griffin, it was nothing short of divine intervention. “It was a calling from God,” she says of her decision in 1996 to quit her job as a case worker in Allentown and establish The Caring Place as a safe haven for the city’s young people. While she was confident in her decision, she had plenty to be nervous about: she and her husband had just built a home, and the seed money for The Caring Place would come from her own savings. But her faith never wavered. “If [God] calls you, He will equip you,” Griffin says.
That’s not to say there haven’t been hardships. Outside of ever-present funding challenges that plague many nonprofits, Griffin says most recently the COVID-19 pandemic struck a major blow. Taste of Soul, a soul food restaurant that helps fund The Caring Place and its staff, was forced to close; rentals for their commercial kitchen, Anna’s Kitchen—another revenue stream— dried up. Staff members departed, and so did students. “We had to rebuild all over again,” says Griffin.
But The Caring Place is thriving once again, offering a full slate of programs for young people in everything from science to sign language to culinary arts to construction. Griffin hopes to add a mental-health support component in the future. “It’s really important, especially after being isolated,” she says. “We still have those issues.”
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Kim Schaffer
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR COMMUNITY BIKE WORKS
"We teach life lessons through bicycles.”
Since its founding in the mid-1990s, Community Bike Works has helped thousands of young people in the Lehigh Valley experience pride of ownership through its signature Earn a Bike program. But executive director Kim Schaffer is quick to point out, it’s not just about bikes. “We teach life lessons through bicycles,” she says.
When Schaffer took over as head of the organization in 2013, she brought a wealth of experience in outreach and advocacy to the table. After graduating from Lycoming College, Schaffer, a Lehigh Valley native, moved to the Midwest to earn her master’s degree in urban planning and policy from the University of Illinois–Chicago. A 10-year stint with the National Low Income Housing Coalition in Washington, D.C., followed before Schaffer came home to the Valley.
Over the past decade she has made it a priority to expand Community Bike Works’ footprint and programs to focus on four areas: protective relationships, STEAM and life skills, positive physical and mental health, and citizenship and leadership. “What I love most is helping young people find their voices and advocating for young people to live their best and healthiest lives,” Schaffer says.
Among the offerings: field trips, workshops, bike rides on all varieties of terrain, and volunteer and apprenticeship opportunities. In 2022, Community Bike Works established its own Youth Advisory Council to give young members a voice in the decision-making process. It’s all about finding new ways to keep participants coming back for more, Schaffer says: “We have so many different ways for them to stay with us as they go through their school career.” The plan seems to be working; seven of 15 current staff members are graduates of the Earn a Bike program.
Community Bike Works also operates a food pantry at its East Allentown location, and runs a summer lunch program offering plant-based meals, proving once again that bicycles are only part of the equation. “This really is about lifelong connections in many ways and making sure we can be there for our community in a number of ways,” Schaffer says.
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Giana Jarrah
FOUNDER WITH MERAKI CO.
"Why don't I be the change and create my own product?”
As a child, Giana Jarrah wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her parents hoped she’d study law or medicine, but, while she did develop an interest in science, she wanted room to express her creativity, too. “Something was still missing and I didn’t know what it was,” Jarrah says.
Her vision for her future began to come into focus when, as a sophomore at Dieruff High School, her mother developed what Jarrah describes as an aggressive form of pre-cancer of the cervix. When a team of biomedical engineers designed a device that would extract abnormal cells from her mother’s cervix, Jarrah was witness to science and innovation blending into one vocation: “It was this forward thinking of, how can I create something to solve a problem, but this problem is in the medical field.”
While studying biomedical engineering at Lehigh University, Jarrah was challenged by her own health issues in the form of multiple urinary tract infections that were resistant to antibiotics. “I felt hopeless at one point,” she recalls. “Nothing was working.” There had to be another way, she thought. She began researching the issue and discovered the world of the vaginal microbiome. Jarrah says it became clear that probiotics could help, but the existing products on the market often came with uncomfortable gastrointestinal side effects. New plan: “Why don’t I be the change and create my own product?”
Her startup, With Meraki Co. (Meraki comes from a Greek word meaning to do something with love, soul and creativity), offers an oral probiotic specifically for urinary and vaginal health. Two years ago, Jarrah won the top prize at StartUp Lehigh Valley’s fourth annual entrepreneurial pitch competition as well as the Ben Franklin Innovation Award. Jarrah notched all these accomplishments before celebrating her twenty-fifth birthday. She’s currently working on new products to further her mission of coming up with innovative solutions for common women’s health issues.
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Jennifer Driscoll
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR LILY’S HOPE FOUNDATION
"It's a family labor of love. It's our passion. ”
Sometimes the smallest gestures make the biggest impact. In 2007, Jennifer Driscoll and her husband, Justin, were trying to navigate life as new parents of a baby girl who was born seven weeks premature and fighting for her life in the NICU. Among the support system that swelled around them was an Allentown neighbor who dropped off paper products and plastic utensils so the exhausted parents wouldn’t have to worry about washing dishes. “Those little things made a huge impact on us because all we were trying to do was focus on Lily, who was on a ventilator,” Driscoll says.
That and many other acts of kindness, coupled with an innate, community-minded spirit—“My whole childhood was all about outreach,” Driscoll says—inspired the creation of the Lily’s Hope Foundation, which helps families grapple with the many challenges that accompany a premature birth. The foundation runs a preemie pantry that supplies everything from the essentials, like sizeappropriate clothing and diapers for the baby, to items that might not seem so obvious, like toys for older siblings so they don’t feel neglected during the process.
“Everything is customized to meet the family’s needs where they’re at in their NICU journey,” Driscoll says. Lily’s Hope also helps defray costs in other ways, such as providing gift cards for food and transportation.
At its inception, Lily’s Hope was run out of the Driscoll home while Jennifer and Justin juggled being full-time parents to two children— their son, Aidan, was born in 2013— and working full-time jobs outside of the foundation. Through it all, Jennifer still found time to author three books: a children’s book (Lily’s Hope, co-authored by Lily), a survival guide for parents with a baby in the NICU, and an activity book geared toward siblings of premature babies (The Heroic Adventures of Hope the Hippo, co-authored by Lily and Aidan). And, although she is the executive director of Lily’s Hope, which has now helped more than 5,750 families, she’s quick to share the foundation’s success with its many volunteers, including her own two children. “It’s a family labor of love. It’s our passion,” Driscoll says. “We’re all in on this.”
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Sara Edwards
LICENSED PROFESSIONAL COUNSELOR OWNER, FIND YOURSELF, & BE THAT
"I really enjoy being their cheerleader.”
Let’s talk about sex. Sara Edwards is here for it. And she gets it. “I really love helping people talk about their sex life and demystifying what’s taboo and normalizing what people think is abnormal,” she says. Edwards is one of the few licensed professional counselors in the Lehigh Valley who specialize in sexuality, which encompasses everything from gender identity to intimacy to relationships with a significant other. It’s a broad topic that impacts everyday life for many people in one way or another, and yet there is still a hesitation to scrutinize its not-so-sunny subject matter, resulting in many people suffering in silence. One example: women who experience pelvic pain during sex. “It’s really common,” Edwards says. “One in four women is affected with it but nobody ever talks about it. There’s this big stigma around acknowledging or admitting anything that might feel wrong, or people feel shameful.” Edwards is also in tune with the unique mental health needs of the LGBTQ+ community; in Pennsylvania, transgender people are required to work with a therapist to receive gender-affirming care.
Edwards, a Phillipsburg, NJ, native, initially wasn’t planning on a career as a therapist. She triple-majored in biology, psychology and English as an undergrad at Rutgers University. But she credits that eclectic background with shaping the counselor she would become. She says she still dips into that headspace—particularly biology—in understanding the latest advancements and research about many topics impacting her clients, like pelvic pain and gender identity.
She established her own practice—Find Yourself, & Be That—in Bethlehem in 2020. As the name suggests, it’s a judgementfree zone. Her goal is to help everyone she counsels blast through whatever roadblock is standing in the way of a happy, authentic life. And the journey, while not always easy, is just as enriching for her. “I really love the opportunity to meet these people and walk through different phases of their lives with them,” Edwards says. “I really enjoy being their cheerleader.”
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Veronica Moore
CHILDREN’S BOOK AUTHOR, COMMUNITY BUILDER & PLANT THERAPY ADVOCATE
"We’re community advocates first and foremost...”
Veronica Moore has long extolled the emotional and spiritual benefits of plant care; thousands of followers on Instagram know her as @brownskinplantmama. The power of plants is something she learned early on while at her mother’s side in her native Chicago. “Nature was a huge part of my upbringing and my connection with her,” says Moore. “I was the child who was right at her hip.”
Fast-forward to 2023. Moore had established herself in the Lehigh Valley as a go-to resource for plant therapy workshops and programs as an avenue toward wellness for adults and children. “It really helps people understand that there is a personal, spiritual, emotional and physical benefit to taking care of plants and being out in nature,” Moore says. For years, Moore also had been ruminating on a story for a children’s book. The plot would explore the bond between a mother and daughter as they experience gardening and taking care of plants together. Moore assumed she was drawing inspiration from her relationship with her own young daughter, Hunter. But it became clear that she was writing about the connection between herself and her mother, Dollie.
When Dollie died unexpectedly around the time the manuscript for Rosie’s Special Gift was finished, Moore had to push past doubts about whether to move forward with the book. Ultimately, the process helped her heal. “I knew it was going to be another opportunity to connect with her from the other side because she’s no longer earthside,” Moore says.
Moore has a second children’s book in the works. When she’s not busy tending to her own plants, she’s helping her husband, Quartez, with whom she also shares a young son, run their Chicago-style barbecue restaurant, The Taste Smokers, in Bethlehem. It doubles as a gathering space for events like art exhibitions and poetry readings. They also donate their leftovers to local food banks. “Community means a lot to me,” Moore says. “We’re community advocates first and foremost before anything else that we do.”
Published as “Lehigh Valley Style's Influential Women of the Year” in the August 2024 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
