[COVER STORY]

The Wolff Family:

Shout-Out for an Active Lifestyle

by Eric Johnson

I t’s right there, hanging on the kitchen wall in plain view so that every family member — Mom, Dad, and the three children — knows exactly what’s going on and who’s going where at what time, every day of the week.
It’s the Wolff family’s bright, color-coded calendar prominently displayed on a 32-inch, wall-mounted computer monitor. And it’s one reason why this energetic family of five successfully manages an incredibly busy schedule.
But another key reason why the Wolffs — Jeffrey the dad, Jen the mom, and their children Charlotte, Audrey, and Olivia — can fit so much into a single day is that they live in a special community that supports an active family lifestyle. That community, of course, is Chantilly.
From their home base in the Walney Oaks subdivision, the parents balance careers, community service, and neighborhood volunteering. They provide all of the necessary transportation for the children, each of whom attends a different school.
Jeffrey and Jen also faithfully support their children’s interests in a wealth of pursuits including ballet, chorus, dance, soccer, lacrosse, school musicals, and even performing in a professional theater. And they generously arrange Disney World trips, exotic overseas travel, and excursions to New York City for Broadway shows.
Convenient, close-knit, can-do Chantilly is the perfect springboard for all of the events color-coded on the Wolffs’ kitchen calendar.
“I like the variety of opportunities there are for our family” in Chantilly, Jen said in a recent interview with her family. “It has a small-town feel and at the same time you are close to everything.
“We enjoy our neighbors,” she added. “Everyone is so caring and keeps an eye out for each other.”
Jeffrey said, “The facilities in the area are fantastic. The schools are great. Chantilly is probably the best place to raise a family.”
Even the children offered a shout-out for Chantilly.
Third-grader Olivia commented that, “I like the teachers and the coaches and the dogs here.” (The Wolff family’s pet is a 6-yearold Goldendoodle named Bailey, who happens to be one of two Goldendoodles named Bailey in the neighborhood. They’ve had him since he was a puppy.) “The dogs are really cute.”
Audrey, who is in sixth grade, said she likes Chantilly’s culinary delights and is a fan of Japanese cuisine. “I like the wide variety of foods,” she said. “I feel like any food you could possibly imagine, you can get it here.”
And Charlotte, an eighth grader who excels as a big sister, appreciates her Chantilly neighbors. “I like all the friendly people who live around here, and how it’s so easy to make new friends,” she said.
Chantilly is a home by choice for Jeffrey and Jen. He hails from East Meadow, N.Y., a Long Island community, and came to appreciate Fairfax County while attending George Mason University. Jen is a Baltimore native who graduated from Towson University.
The couple started dating after a chance encounter at a meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Tysons, a community service organization that focuses on helping children. Jen was delighted to learn that Jeffrey had been a founding member of the club. The rest is history.
Volunteer service with Kiwanis has helped shape their strong relationship. Each has served in an official capacity as a governor of the Capital District Kiwanis, an umbrella group for the approximately 160 Kiwanis Clubs in Virginia, DC, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia. Jeffrey was the district’s governor from 2011-12 and currently serves as Executive Director, while Jen served as governor from 2022-23, providing leadership for 4,000 club members across the region.
Jeffrey and Jen have also supported one another. “I find it easier to be active in Kiwanis if your spouse is also in Kiwanis,” Jen said. “We try very hard to balance our activity in the organization.”
Community events include a frigid “polar dip” swim every February in Reston’s Lake Anne to raise money for Northern Virginia charities. The Kiwanis club also revived overgrown gardens to help Brookfield Elementary School students regain use of their Outdoor Learning Lab after the COVID-19 public health emergency.
The couple is keen to involve their children in philanthropic endeavors whenever possible. Charlotte, for example, volunteered for the Brookfield garden project. Charlotte was also one of the approximately 1,000 youngsters to graduate so far from babysitting training in areas such as first aid and choking rescue through a Kiwanis-sponsored Safe Sitter program that started in 2009.

An Active Family's Pursuits

by Eric Johnson
Jeffrey and Jen Wolff encourage their three daughters to pursue extracurricular activities — and their dreams —- while doing all they can to provide support.
On Tuesdays in mid-January, for example, the parents were taking Olivia and Charlotte to dance lessons while carving out time for Audrey’s voice lessons followed by dance lessons. On other days of the week, they focused on a wide variety of pursuits including lacrosse practice, ballet recitals, and professional acting.
Coordination and cooperation have been crucial for their success. “I’m usually taking them to ballet while Jeffrey cooks so that we can all be fed,” Jen explained.
Here are some of the many facets of this busy family’s Chantilly lifestyle:
  •  All three girls perform at Not Just Dance, a theatrical arts studio in Chantilly.
  •  Last summer, Audrey auditioned for and was cast as Susan Walker for a professional run of Miracle on 34th Street at Toby’s Dinner Theatre in Columbia, Md. She appeared in 33 shows over two months.
  • Audrey is starring in a short film called “Portrait of Shadows,” directed by Anthony Parson, an Emmy award-winning sound designer and Emmy-nominated film director, and is being considered for other roles.
  • Charlotte is involved with theater at her middle school, currently starring as SpongeBob SquarePants in The SpongeBob Musical at Franklin Middle School.
  • Charlotte and Olivia dance at
    the Center for Ballet Arts, where
    Charlotte is a member of the Ballet
    Arts Ensemble of Fairfax.
  • Audrey takes tap, jazz, and voice lessons at Not Just Dance.
  • Academically, Charlotte is a member of the National Junior Honors Society at Franklin Middle School. Audrey and Olivia are both Advanced Academic students at their elementary schools. Audrey is active in the Student Council, Tech Squad, and Safety Patrol.
  • Charlotte was involved in Girls on the Run in elementary school. Audrey played Chantilly Youth Association (CYA) soccer between ages 4 and 10. Olivia plays CYA lacrosse and is involved in Girls on the Run.
“It’s good to give back,” said Jeffrey.
“…because not everyone is given the same hand of cards,” added Jen.
The couple is also very much involved in supporting their children’s schools and the neighborhood. Both are involved in parent-teacher associations (PTAs), and Jen served as a PTA president for two years. Jeffrey has spent seven years as president of a homeowners association (HOA) for their neighborhood of about 158 units. Both have helped organize kid-fun events such as summertime block parties with water-spraying courtesy of the local fire department and chilly December carriage rides on subdivision streets.
Videoconferencing plays an important role when Jeffrey and Jen find themselves ferrying children on community service meeting nights. Jen said the technology “allows us to be a lot more active in the passions that we have in addition to our children’s passions.” Thanks to videoconferencing, Jeffrey can preside at HOA meetings “from the car, even when he’s in a ballet (school) parking lot,” Jen said. During her stint as Kiwanis governor, she said, “I was taking committee meetings from various child locations.”
Jen’s mother Kim Dugent of Pasadena, Md., pitches in whenever possible. Also working in the couple’s favor are jobs that allow remote work: Jeffrey is a software solutions engineer for a Chicago-based company and Jen has a graphic design business. Working from home means no need for office commuting.
That said, the couple spends plenty of time on the road shuttling children back and forth to school, sporting events, dance lessons, and more. A monumental effort was needed to transport Audrey after she was chosen for a key role as Susan Walker in a Columbia, Md., dinner theater’s run of the holiday season musical Miracle on 34th Street.
Many hours were spent behind the wheel between Chantilly and Columbia for each of the 33 performances between mid- November and mid-January. “Because of traffic, we would have to leave for a 7:30 (p.m.) call time at 4:30,” said Jeffrey. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have a Susan.”
But the challenges of transportation haven’t diminished their appreciation for Chantilly. Jen notes, for example, that recent upgrades to I66 have made a difference.
And much-deserved stress-relief is never far for the Wolffs — a family that loves to travel.
“We enjoy faraway places — Japan, Thailand, Australia, and Bora Bora,” Jen said. “We’ve also been all over Europe, and have taken many cruises with Disney, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and MSC.”
Since marrying at Disney World, Jeffrey and Jen have frequently returned with their children to visit the resort as well as Jeffrey’s parents, who live in Orlando.
As the children have grown, the need for scheduling has become more important. So when Jen asked for a calendar in the kitchen to organize everyone, Jeff mounted a computer with monitor on the kitchen wall. The calendar is now a critical element for this busy household “so we know where we have to be all the time,” Jeffrey said.
“The kids can see where they have to be, too,” Jen added.
“It’s a dance,” said Jeffrey. “The whole thing is a dance.”