LifeChanger of the Year Nominee Profile

Jessica DiMino was nominated by a family member, Caroline Green.

Ms. DiMino has worked tirelessly every day to change lives for the past twelve years. In the classroom, she's dedicated to helping her students grow, both educationally and personally. Ms. DiMino has continuously worked to identify innovative ways to cultivate her students. She introduces them to creative teaching methods that give them real-world, lasting experiences and lessons they can take with them as they graduate from high school and move into the next stages of their lives.

Her extraordinary desire to take teaching to the next level sparked a truly life-changing idea. This idea was to partner with the local supermarket, ShopRite, to see if they would have an interest in opening a small sub-store within the school that she would take full ownership of developing. ShopRite loved the idea, and she moved forward to open up a small mock-store at Old Bridge High School, which sold non-perishable items.

Ms. DiMino changed an ordinary room in the school into a full-functioning convenience store. The store is open four days per week and employs a handful of the Special Education Students as part of the "ShopRite Program," with the hopes of instilling them with real-life skills such as face to face communication and money management.

Several months later, the ShopRite program has come to life! The students are making great strides in both educational and personal growth, and the overall program has been a huge success for not only the school, but the entire town.

"Jessica's perseverance and dedication has really revolutionized the overall Special Education teaching process," said Green. "She is truly a LifeChanger, not just to me, but to the entire town!"