PORT ST. LUCIE PEOPLE
The YOUTH
IMPROVEMENT DIRECTOR
After years of lugging her suitcase around the nation
and overseas for consulting work with various
federal agencies, Teresa Bishop has finally been able
to put that suitcase on the shelf after taking a job
right in her own backyard.
Bishop has worked as a consultant for the past 20 years,
helping communities prevent substance misuse and work on
juvenile justice reform. A year ago, she was hired to serve as
the executive director of the Roundtable of St. Lucie County, a
multi-agency facilitator coordinating efforts to work on positive
youth development in the community.
“The Roundtable creates a mechanism for people to develop
new strategies for their agencies,” Bishop says.
The agency addresses three initiatives: Restoring the Village
Youth Initiative, an anti-violence strategy to prevent
youth involvement in gang activity; Kids at Hope, which
offers hope to students in St. Lucie County schools; and Drug
Free St. Lucie, which is looking at environmental factors contributing
to substance misuse in the community. The Roundtable
and its networks are looking at policies, practices and
approaches so youth do not have access to drugs.
Bishop says she grew up as a “Kid at Hope” in a poor
household in Connecticut before moving to Florida at 21
to marry. Her husband was from Indian River County and
they moved to Gifford. She also lived in Vero Beach and
Fort Pierce before moving to Port St. Lucie in the mid-1990s,
where she met and married her current husband.
“I love Port St. Lucie,” she says. “Unless God says otherwise,
I will meet my Maker here.”
In Connecticut, Bishop says, a young woman could get
a good-paying job with just a high school diploma. Florida
was very different, she continues, and so she began studies
at Indian River Community College. After graduating with
her associate degree, she went on to the University of Central
Florida to complete a bachelor’s degree.
All her life’s work — the skills she learned, the strategies
she employed, the contacts she made — is coming to
fruition in her latest endeavor. During the early days of the
40 Port St. Lucie Magazine
>>
BY PATTIE DURHAM
ANTHONY INSWASTY
Teresa Bishop, executive
director of the Roundtable
of St. Lucie County, heads
a three-pronged effort,
with the input from many
agencies, to help improve
the lives of all St. Lucie
County residents.