Marti Benedetti

As Detroit's office-sharing, co-working businesses such as WeWork grow, so are the businesses occupying their office space. Take Bloomscape Inc., an online plant company started last March in WeWork's first downtown Detroit co-working space. Bloomscape CEO Justin Mast founded the company with one employee in a small WeWork office and now has 11 employees in considerably larger quarters.

Volunteering is second nature to Candice Susak. "My parents got me involved very young," she said. "Helping others was part of the culture of my family." Now 30, the content and training implementor for Detroit-based Sachse Construction is mentoring high school students once a week during work hours through nonprofit Winning Futures, which helps get students on a career path.

These findings, based on research by AARP Michigan and Western Michigan University College of Health and Human Services, along with help from 19 other state organizations, were released at an AARP conference in Lansing earlier this week. The entities looked at scores of data and came up with tangible ways to help resolve the issues and make the state a more senior-friendly place.