Out of this World
People to Watch 2011

By Sally Friedman

Some things worth watching are more than impressive – they take your breath away.
It would take a thesaurus of adjectives to describe the men and women we have chosen as this year’s People to Watch. Take a look at the successes they have had and the great promise they hold for tomorrow. Then we can all sit back, and watch what happens.

Mary Ann Boccolini

When she was 13 years old, Mary Ann Boccolini’s mother got sick. The youngest of four children growing up in Maple Shade, Mary Ann was left in the dark about what was going on, so she had to fill in the blanks for herself.

“I kept wondering whether there was a name for what she had,” recalls Boccolini, now president and CEO of Samaritan Hospice. “The diagnosis was hidden from me.

It was colon cancer, and it would take away my mother after several brief remissions, then a steep decline,” she recalls.

There was no hospice care back then, so the neighbors helped the family. But the whole experience left a deep impression on her, and definitely steered her toward a nursing career.
Boccolini would embrace the profession with both passion and compassion. After earning a BS in nursing from Boston University, she worked at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, then went on to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Ultimately she landed in oncology units at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Memorial Hospital of Burlington County, now Virtua.

Along the way, this dedicated nurse became a divorced single mother of two daughters. She has since married Robert Boccolini, a court reporter now in private practice, and together they have a daughter.

As her career evolved, Boccolini, a Marlton resident, was increasingly drawn to the vulnerability of very sick patients. “Wanting people to be safe and to have comfort and dignity in the last part of their lives has always been my mission. So when the hospice movement got a foothold in this country in the 1970s, I paid attention.”

Boccolini first joined Samaritan Hospice as director of clinical operations, working with its end-of-life care services and helping to establish its Center for Grief and Loss (now the Samaritan Center for Grief Support).

The center has become a major source of support for anyone in SJ facing grief after the loss of a loved one. It offers community education, free grief support groups and crisis response following traumatic loss. Under her leadership, Samaritan also has started a 12-bed inpatient center at Virtua when the need for care is acute.

“One of our main challenges has been to dispel old myths about hospice care. It’s definitely not just for cancer diagnoses, or the elderly,” says Boccolini, noting that Samaritan has introduced complementary therapies for Samaritan patients and their families including massage therapy, music therapy and even pet therapy.

“I’m enormously proud of what this staff has done, and how our culture of caring is what families remember and cherish,” says Boccolini. “Human life is precious from beginning to end, and we all deserve loving care all the way through.”

Bobby McRae

We often hear tales of what prima donnas football players are. We know about their huge salaries, and in some cases, their huge egos.

Bobby McRae, an educator, has heard those stories too, but his mission in life is to teach youngsters that football has plenty of good guys, and that football and positive values can go hand-in-hand. In his unique Mentor Me program, McRae has asked laudable major league players to serve as mentors and role models, interacting with youngsters, especially those from inner city environments.

“And it’s really working,” says McRae, who earned an undergraduate degree in criminal justice and a master’s degree in organizational leadership, with a concentration in business management, from Mercy College. McRae is currently working on a PhD in Higher Education and Conflict Resolution at Nova Southeastern University.

So yes, his credentials are there to work with youth. But it’s McRae’s energy and spirit that truly inspires.

“You can use football as a platform to motivate the young as long as the players with whom they have contact help them to recognize the basics: that good study habits, discipline and self-control are all keys to a successful life.”

McRae, through his company, Mentor Me Community Support, recruited NFL role models like Brian Westbrook, Omar Gaither and DeSean Jackson to spend valuable time with kids at youth football camps, where youngsters learn some important and sobering lessons from their heroes about values.

“I know from experience – in college, I wasn’t very serious until I met and associated with serious people,” says McRae. That earnest academic makeover led this business leader to his own success, and it’s a life lesson he hopes to share with as many kids as he can reach.

Today, Mentor Me has programs in five states, all designed to have a positive impact on youth who may not have gotten loud and clear life-lessons yet.

“I’ve done assembly after assembly with my wake-up call,” says McRae, who also helps well-known players start charitable foundations and football camps.

“We also raise scholarship money through Mentor Me, and my real hope is that our message can reach kids who need to hear it. If it does, then I’ll know I’ve chosen the right path.”

Jason Epstein

When he was 11 years old, Jason Epstein’s world became a rocky place. Diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease and a growth hormone disorder, this young man felt isolated and alone.

“You certainly aren’t confident when you enter high school at four-foot-seven and 70 pounds,” says Epstein, now a graduating senior at Syracuse University.

Somewhere along the way, with clarity and maturity, Epstein decided to forget the hand he was dealt and move on. “Even though my illnesses affected me greatly, I made the commitment to myself to get beyond them and to have a focus.”

That focus turned out to be medicine. Thanks to a summer program for high school students with an interest in medicine, Epstein knew he’d found his true calling. He has never wavered.

“I saw bypass surgeries and mastectomies, autopsies and childbirth. And it became clear that part of my motivation for wanting to be a doctor was because of all the efforts made on my behalf,” says Epstein, who now has attained an average height and weight, and is in excellent control of his Crohn’s Disease.

He is so focused on a medical career that the 21-year-old college student even selects extra-curricular activities based on how they will impact his quest to become a doctor. He has become an EMT, has spent time with geriatric patients so he can come to know their special needs, and has overcome his fear of scientific research by plunging into complex projects.

“I push myself more than I suppose most college kids do – I’m very goal-directed. But I feel that college also has been the place to reinvent myself. I’ve gotten beyond my shyness, which is a major accomplishment for me.”

With the constant support of his parents, Judy and Gary, Epstein is ready for his long journey to the finish line – a medical degree.

He also is philosophical: “If I don’t end up in medical school next year, I’ll still know that I did everything I could have – and I’ll try again,” says Epstein. “Maybe because it has never been, I don’t expect life to be easy.”

Alicia Bessette & Matthew Quick

Growing up in central Massachusetts, Alicia Bessette was spotted by her fourth grade teacher as a promising young writer. That teacher pointed out to her that people with her natural gift wrote books – and that was her first realization that maybe someday, she could do just that.

Someday has come. Bessette achieved that dream with publication of her first novel, Simply From Scratch, last summer. The book is already an international bestseller, having spent eight weeks on the Spiegel Bestseller List after also being published in Germany, China and Australia.

The novel is about a young widow, a ten-year-old girl and a cooking contest that alters their lives.
It’s been a heady time for Bessette, who has paid her dues along the way, with day jobs working for various publications after graduating with a double major in English and French from LaSalle University.

For now, it’s back to the computer every day to complete a new novel at the Collingswood apartment she shares with her husband Matthew Quick, also a novelist. “I’m living my dream,” she says.

So is her husband. Like Alicia, Quick recognized his passion for writing early. “But growing up in Oakyln, it wasn’t really cool to tell people that reading A Tale of Two Cities and Old Man and the Sea spoke to my heart and made me realize how much I loved the written word.”

So initially, Quick listened to his father and studied something practical – secondary education with a major in English at LaSalle, where he met Alicia.

“I thought teaching would give me plenty of time to write, but I was wrong. It was harder than I’d ever dreamed it would be,” says Quick, who taught at The Bancroft School, Eastern High School and Haddonfield Memorial High.

But even as he told his students to live their dreams, Quick realized that he wasn’t following his own advice. So in 2004, he made some dramatic changes, quitting his teaching job to travel and do some soul-searching.

Then Quick moved with his wife to her parents’ home in Massachusetts, settled into their basement and began writing. When he emerged three years later, it was with his debut novel, The Silver Linings Playbook. He got an agent, and that agent sold the novel to Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In addition to being published in several countries, the book won a 2009 PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention and was lauded by People, The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio among others.

The plot revolves around how a man who’s regained his lost memory copes with his wife’s betrayal. It’s poignant, real and replete with references to family, loss and even the Philadelphia Eagles.
In one of those rare leaps, the book already has been optioned for a film, with movie rights sold to The Weinstein Company.

Another of Quick’s works, Sorta Like a Rock Star, also won popular and critical acclaim and focuses on the teen years, another familiar theme for this former high school teacher.

This husband and wife team are always one another’s first readers and sometimes thoughtful editors. “We’re grateful that we can do what we love,” adds Matt, “and do it together.”

Jocelyn Mitchell-Williams, MD

One wonders when Dr. Jocelyn Williams ever sleeps. But then, hard work has been a way of life for this dynamic woman who was recently appointed associate dean for multi-cultural and community affairs at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, which is slated to open in 2012 in Camden.

Her goal in that key position is to enhance the diversity of students entering the medical field and to attract quality physicians to join the new medical school.

And with all that, Williams still maintains a part-time practice as an obstetrician/gynecologist, which has always been her great joy.

In her new position, she will be working in one of the poorest cities in the United States, seeking to include the disenfranchised, and to give them their due – and insure their dignity.

“This is a community that has long deserved a medical school. The healthcare picture for Camden’s disenfranchised will be far, far brighter – and the school will also become an economic driver for the region,” observes Williams, who was hired last September.

The wife of WPVI-TV anchor Rick Williams, this physician’s own story of becoming a doctor is a testament to her deep commitment. Trained as an electrical engineer at Rutgers, she went on to get her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), and then attended medical school at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of UMDNJ.

“I did it having three children, and there were those times when I wondered whether I could really make it,” she says. “I had to find unique ways to study – I sat in the front row in lectures, taped them, then played them back in the car as I commuted. Then I’d wait for the kids to go to sleep so I could study more.”

It clearly paid off: She emerged as chief resident of OB/GYN at Cooper University Hospital.
“I’m very proud of the person I’ve become,” says Williams. “I could never have gotten here without the support of my parents, my children and my poor husband, who has put up with my beeper going off at all hours – 3 a.m. seems to be a particularly popular time for labor to begin.”

Tim Kerrihard

Tim Kerrihard was already lifeguarding by the time he was in eighth grade. So swimming was definitely on his radar screen – and back then, YMCAs and swimming were often linked.
How things have changed!

Kerrihard, now President/CEO of the YMCA of Burlington and Camden Counties, is keenly aware of the Y’s need to redefine themselves beyond swimming lessons and expand their mission in the minds of consumers. Non-profits, he well knows, need to have a business mentality to succeed, and marketing is one key component.Kerrihard welcomes the challenge.

Initially a bilingual educator in California, Kerrihard got involved in the YMCA when he and his New Jersey-born wife moved east, settling in Moorestown. He took a position at the Princeton Y as director of youth and family services.

In 2004, when the then-CEO at the Moorestown Y offered Kerrihard the job of development director, he gladly accepted. He then became Chief Operating Officer in 2007 and in 2009, when his predecessor retired, Kerrihard stepped into the CEO position.

“We were having a tough time right around 2007,” he recalls. “From 1991 to 2000 especially, the Y had experienced great success. But success lulled us into thinking that it would go on forever.”

Unfortunately, the landscape changed and gradually, the YMCA began facing competition from the for-profit side. So Kerrihard has been busy re-branding the facility through a strategic business plan. Now, more than half of the Y’s programs are about youth development – from child care to camp, with gym and fitness thrown into the mix. “We are definitely not just a big building with a pool anymore.”

Today, under Kerrihard’s leadership, the YMCA follows proven business guidelines as it goes about
its mission of strengthening communities. It’s working so well that the facility has 20,000 members and is stronger than it was even two years ago, despite the global recession.

“During hard times,” explains Kerrihard, “we serve even more people. When Camden’s YMCA closed down, for example, Burlington County expanded its reach into Camden County. “It may eventually mean having a satellite in Camden County,” explains Kerrihard, who relies on a 30-member Board of Governors with a number of strong business leaders among them.

“We’re proud of what we do for this community, and also proud that we do it in a businesslike way. For us, it’s definitely the route to survival and success.”