Sheri Sax To Sheri Sax, there’s something special about allowing elderly men and women the opportunity to stay in their homes. As executive director for the Jewish Family Service Association's Care At Home program, Sax leads the team that provides in-home care to senior citizens throughout Northeast Ohio and regardless of religious affiliation. The goal is to keep their elderly residents from having to go into nursing homes when they would prefer to live on their own, but may need a little help. “These folks are struggling in their community and they tend to need help at different intervals…

Sheryl Markowitz As a social worker, Sheryl Markowitz had seen the most fragile members of society — the severely disabled, mentally ill and physically ill — and realized they weren’t getting the treatment they needed. “They were complicated and they needed so much service and so much support and no one has time,” she said. So she went to work, taking a position at WellPoint, the largest health benefits company in the country by membership, as national director over cases dealing with severely disabled adults. During her nearly five years there she led a team that developed the Integrated …

Shari Goldberg Shari Goldberg used to meet other parents at grocery stores. It was the late 1990s, and doctors were preaching a diet free of gluten and casein for children with autism. Goldberg had seen some improvement in the health of her son, who was diagnosed when he was 18 months old, and was helping other parents by showing them what to buy. “In those days no one knew what gluten was,” she said. “The bread is like $6, so you want to make sure it tastes good. We would talk about which tastes the best, which toasts the best. It had to be manageable.” Those are the humble beginnings of the…

Susan Borison It didn’t make sense. Four years ago, during a conversation with other moms, Susan Borison said the question kept coming up: Why were store shelves flush with parenting magazines for babies and toddlers, but nothing for when those kids grew up to be teens? A year later, and without a bit of business or publishing experience, she offered a solution with the first issue of Your Teen magazine. The quarterly publication she started with friend and Beachwood School Board member Jennifer Tramer features advice about raising an adolescent using both experts and other parents as sources…

March is about to end and with it, the close of Women’s History Month. First celebrated publicly as “Women’s History Week” in Sonoma, Calif., during the first week in March, it became a national celebration in 1981 by an act of Congress before it was expanded to the entire month six years later. For a look at what women have to offer, one need look no farther than Beachwood. Below is the first of a sampling of those women, but is by no means a complete representation. We’ve included the founder of a magazine for parents of teenagers, two executives of nonprofits, the director of a theater …