Community Organizing Program Citizen Advisory Board

The King County Community Organizing Program Citizen Advisory Board is a volunteer board that advises on the programming, policy, and direction of the Community Organizing Program. The board's authority is established through the State Department of Commerce and RCW 43.270.

The board has up to 12 citizen members. The RCW requires that the members represent areas concerned about substance abuse and violence prevention such as education, law enforcement, local government, treatment, and parents.

Meeting Details

The Advisory Board meets the 3rd Tuesday of the month, from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.  The meeting location will be at:

SOAR
801 23rd Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98144

Recruitment

For information about becoming a board member, please contact Sharon Toquinto at sharon.toquinto@kingcounty.gov.

Advisory Board Members

• Celia Arriaga, representing K-12 education. Celia works for the Seattle Public School District in the Prevention and Intervention Department. She works on issues related to substance abuse and violence prevention with students, staff and parents. Celia has assisted K-12 schools implement best practice violence and drug prevention programs throughout the Seattle School District and abroad. She has been a board member since 1989.
  
  
• Mark Howard, Co-Chair, representing law enforcement. Mark is a civilian employee of the Seattle Police Department where he has worked in Community Crime Prevention and currently works in Emergency Management. Mark has been on the board since 1989.
  

• Judy Manchester, representing education, serves as a Career and Technical Education Program and Student Support Specialist for the Lake Washington School District. Among her duties in Student Support is overseeing the school district drug, alcohol, tobacco, and violence programs. From 2001 to 2009 she served as the Youth and Human Services Supervisor for the City of Kirkland. Prior to working for the City of Kirkland, Judy was the Activity Coordinator and a Health teacher at Lake Washington High School. She has served on many regional human services committees and advisory boards, such as the Eastside Human Services Forum, the Alliance of Eastside Agencies, FACES East, and Healthy Start. She is currently Secretary of the Eastside Community Network. Through her role at the City and in secondary education, Judy has worked to educate youth, as well as adults about the many social issues affecting our communities.

• Constance Perenyi, representing community organizations in North King County. Constance serves as Executive Director of Friends of Third Place Commons, a small but effective organization that presents over 800 events each year in the Commons and at the Lake Forest Park Farmers Market. Friends of Third Place Commons collaborates with a variety of organizations and agencies to cultivate and nurture vital community partnerships that serve people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds.

• Helena Stephens, representing local government and youth services. Helena has been the Family, Youth and Teen Services Manager for the City of Bellevue for the past 16 years. Helena has also worked on youth development, community building and juvenile justice initiatives. She works with numerous non-profit organizations that focus on advancing the issues of youth, low-income communities, and communities of color. She continues to work tirelessly to look for opportunities to reduce the impact of poverty, drug, alcohol and violence affecting the families of King County.
  
  
• Kimberly Walker, representing youth services and the faith community. Kimberly began as a youth leader in one of our youth leadership programs. She is a Washington State University graduate with a B.A. in Communications and is currently a second year graduate student at the University of Washington School of Social Work. She has served youth in Maple Valley as a Youth Coordinator. She also works with the youth and marketing & communications department at Greater Mt. Moriah M.B. Church. She is a passionate advocate for safe supportive communities.
  
  
• Liz Wilhelm, Co-Chair. Liz has been a Certified Alcohol and Other Drug Preventionist for sixteen years. She received a Masters of Science in Community Wellness and Prevention at National-Louis University. After coming to Seattle, she developed the Washington State prevention curriculum to train and teach leaders in the prevention field. After managing the Alcohol /Drug Clearinghouse for over five years, she became the funding and policy analyst for the Committee for Children. Liz served as the Project Coordinator and Director of the Kitsap County Drug Free Communities grant. Currently, Liz is a substance abuse prevention specialist instructor for various community colleges. In her volunteer time, she serves as a founding member on the Prevention Specialist Certification Board of Washington, as the Vice President of the Washington Association for Substance Abuse and Violence Prevention (WASAVP), a statewide prevention advocacy organization, and as the co-chair of the King County Community Organizing Program Advisory Board.