WHEELING — The Youth Services System Inc. Board of Directors has announced a new chairman in Robert Dobkin, along with new members Melissa Ashmore and Cynthia Morrison, all three of whom are Wheeling residents with strong commitments to helping their neighbors in need.

Dobkin is a trust officer at WesBanco Trust & Investment Services in Wheeling. He served on the Big Brothers Big Sisters board before it became the YSS Youth Mentoring Network in 2016. In 2018, he accepted a position on the YSS board. He became vice chair in 2019 and assumed chairmanship on July 1, following Emily Fisher’s three-year term.

He is a graduate of John Marshall High School, received a psychology degree from West Virginia Northern Community College, earned a Bachelor of Organizational Leadership Degree from Wheeling Jesuit University, and graduated with a Juris Doctor degree from Duquesne University School of Law. He worked in the automotive industry, in the oil and gas industry, and as an attorney in a Pittsburgh-based national firm before joining WesBanco.

Dobkin is a member of the West Virginia State Bar, the Pennsylvania Bar Association and the Grand Vue Park Foundation Board. He serves as treasurer of the WVNCC Foundation Board of Directors and Temple Shalom Board of Trustees. He lives in Wheeling with his wife Amy and their 10-year-old son, Ben.

Dobkin said he looks forward to helping secure the future of YSS so it can continue its mission “to create better futures for children, families and our community.”

“We have a lot of bricks and mortar and a lot of spokes in this big wheel of YSS, but we are our mission. Whatever spoke we’re talking about, we are the mission, and that’s being an agency that impacts people who live on the margins and that sometimes, oftentimes, are forgotten about,” Dobkin said.

Ashmore is a realtor with family-owned Kennen & Kennen Realtors in Wheeling. She is a graduate of Wheeling Park High School and received a bachelor’s degree from Fairmont State University. She taught school in Charlotte, N.C., where she met her husband, Paul. The couple moved to Wheeling in 2004 and have two children, Ben, 15, and Samantha, 12.

She volunteers with the Vineyard Church Blessing Boutique and the YSS Sophie Moses Free Store, helping connect children and families in need with items donated by community members.

Morrison is the executive director of River Valley Health Foundation. She is a graduate of Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy and received a bachelor’s degree in English at College of Wooster. She worked as an admissions counselor at Wheeling Jesuit University before attending law school at Ohio Northern University, from where she earned a Juris Doctor degree. She clerked for a federal judge for two years and was a litigator in Pittsburgh, Toledo and Philadelphia before returning to Wheeling in 2016 to help care for her mother.

She is the vice president of the YWCA Wheeling Board of Directors and volunteers with the Wheeling Symphony Auxiliary.

Also serving on the YSS board are E. Marc Abraham, Darryl E. Clausell, Meredith Dailer, Rick Davis, Ralph Edwards, Emily Fisher, Emily Freeman-Waters, Robert J. Gaudio, vice chair Alex Nagem, finance chair Justin Pastorius, Matt Porter, Dion Scripture and secretary Zak Zatezalo.