Senior living consumers have evolved, but many life plan community marketing programs haven’t kept pace. Until now. This session will showcase an innovative, multi-layered marketing and communications strategy that uses technology, personalization, and relationship-building to deliver a standout prospect experience. Presenters from a life plan community will describe their outreach to prospective residents, including customer relationship management, AI-driven content development, website behavior tracking, personalized emails, and follow-up systems. They’ll report how these innovations have increased prospect engagement, built trust, and delivered tailored messages that address individual fears, motivations, and readiness stages. Don’t miss this opportunity to apply a proven model to boost conversions and occupancy.

Are you seeking up-to-date information on how federal funding and policy decisions are likely to affect your service lines? Or are you simply curious about the broader policy landscape shaping the aging services field? Either way, you’ll leave satisfied after attending this speed round of Washington updates. The LeadingAge Policy Team will be on hand to fill you in on the latest developments affecting Medicare and Medicaid, workforce policy, affordable housing, and the federal legal landscape. You’ll also receive advocacy tips to ensure your voice is heard in Washington, DC.

Senior living organizations are navigating a workforce environment marked by staffing shortages, rapid onboarding, rising recruitment costs, and shifting expectations among new and seasoned team members. This session will explore how thoughtful experience design and strategic technology use can reshape the employee experience and foster lasting commitment. Presenters will share workforce-strengthening strategies that adapt customer-experience methods to the aging services workplace. They’ll outline the advantages of treating employees as “internal customers” by offering internships, mentoring programs, community-building initiatives, data-driven coaching tools, and streamlined career pathways. You’ll learn practical steps to reduce turnover and make workforce investments more predictable and measurable, even with resource constraints.

Strong leaders persuade, anticipate the future, and guide their organizations toward results. Strong “servant leaders” also build and nurture trust, deepen relationships, and develop team members so they can make a lasting impact. This session will feature servant leaders working to improve the field of aging services and the lives of older adults. Panelists will describe their involvement in a variety of movements, including dementia inclusion, LGBTQ+ affordable housing, and age-friendly cities. They’ll share how they apply their talents and wisdom to promote equity, access, and inclusion within and beyond their organizations. Join this session for a dose of inspiration and leave feeling motivated to consider your own mission and legacy.

As the country’s healthcare system becomes more interconnected, the need for interoperable data exchange across care settings has never been more critical. Yet interoperability is often hindered because its meaning and benefits are unclear to the providers who could gain the most from it. This session will clear up the confusion. Presenters will demonstrate the practical advantages of interoperability and help you assess your organization’s readiness to implement it. They’ll also offer practical strategies for connecting data systems, enabling seamless data exchange with other care settings, and supporting integrated workflows. You’ll learn how one organization used interoperability to transform its operations, boost staff morale, and strengthen referral networks.

Everyone is a fundraiser. That’s the message of this session, which will help you support key strategic priorities in your senior living community by connecting donors, both emotionally and programmatically, to specific activities or divisions on your campus. Presenters will show you how to leverage the strategic vision of your board, executive team, divisional leaders, and key frontline staff to move the needle on benevolence. You’ll learn to build relationships with diverse team leaders across all care levels and lifestyle divisions, then work together to prioritize fundraising opportunities that align with donor interests and your strategic plan.

To affiliate … or not to affiliate? That is the question many single-site life plan communities are asking. This session will appeal to mavericks who prefer to remain independent yet recognize they must improve at every level to thrive in a consolidating market. Leaders from successful single-site communities will share how they resisted affiliation by strengthening operations, culture, and finances. They’ll also recommend strategies to keep communities stable and future-ready. Whether you’re committed to independence or considering affiliation, this session will offer fresh perspectives on how a strong single-site brand can enhance market perception, attract mission-aligned staff, and build trust among residents, prospects, and referral sources.

Federal policy is increasingly focused on strengthening the domestic workforce to address persistent recruitment and retention challenges across the aging services continuum. This session will provide an overview of key workforce policy developments, including those affecting training and education pathways, worker supports, funding opportunities, and emerging regulatory requirements. Presenters will explain how these changes are likely to affect aging services organizations and where new challenges may arise. Join us for a timely, balanced conversation about how federal policy is shaping—and at times complicating—the future of the aging services workforce. You’ll take away practical tips to help you engage in the national conversation.

A senior living community’s dining program shapes residents’ daily experience and signals organizational stability and operational efficiency. Unfortunately, high staff turnover, driven by low compensation, often leads to inconsistent service quality and undermines resident satisfaction. This session will provide practical tools to maintain your dining program’s quality, consistency, and service standards. Presenters will share management practices—including coaching frontline supervisors and standardizing expectations—that build resilience in dining departments. You’ll also learn to improve the dining experience through menu innovations, structured leadership training, outcome measurement, and operational systems that sustain quality. Make your dining experience a reliable, mission-critical touchpoint despite ongoing workforce challenges.

Frontline caregivers are the heart of every aging services organization, yet most have limited opportunities to develop their leadership skills. During this session, a panel of human resources and leadership development professionals from LeadingAge member organizations will highlight promising programs that harness the leadership potential of the frontline workforce, enhance organizational culture, increase retention, and help caregivers contribute more effectively to their organizations. Presenters will share learning modules that have resonated with frontline learners and offer tips for adapting them to diverse learning needs and day-to-day operational challenges. You’ll gain practical strategies for launching or strengthening a frontline leadership program that benefits all levels of your organization.

Traditional wellness and therapy spaces often fall short of meeting the needs of older adults, especially those with mobility limitations or cognitive decline. Fortunately, that’s changing. This session will explore how SeniorScapes, Inc., is creating environments that help older adults move, socialize, and thrive outdoors with dignity and safety. Presenters will showcase the nonprofit’s flagship project at Asbury Communities in Frederick, MD, and explain how it supports fitness, mobility, and brain health. You’ll learn which design and program elements to include in age-friendly public spaces and explore the broader role of parks as social infrastructure that promotes connection and equity for older adults.

Faith-based senior living organizations can no longer rely solely on congregational support for financial sustainability. Instead, they must build internal fundraising capacity by fostering a culture of philanthropy among residents, many of whom don’t realize their monthly fees don’t cover all expenses. During this session, a life plan community’s chief growth officer will share how their organization and its foundation built relationships with key stakeholders and improved donor engagement. Presenters will explain why their fundraising efforts succeeded and how they plan to enhance them. You’ll discover how resident engagement, a strong gift structure, and AI-powered technology boosted their fundraising—and could do the same for your organization.

External creative consultants often deliver results for senior living communities, but at the expense of consistency, responsiveness, and organizational alignment. This session will show you how to transform your organization’s creative vision from an outsourced service into an in-house team that drives brand excellence, fosters innovation, and delivers measurable impact. Presenters will prepare you to assess the value of internalizing creative services, assemble the right talent, define workflows, and integrate creative operations into your organizational strategy. You’ll gain practical tips to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance brand consistency.

Affiliation can help nonprofit senior living organizations achieve long-term sustainability, foster innovation, and remain true to their core mission and values amid today’s operational challenges. This session will explore the affiliation process that united two life plan communities under a shared governance structure while preserving their individual identities. Presenters will outline steps for building a successful affiliation, including establishing a robust legal and governance framework, drafting bylaws that reflect shared values and priorities, and addressing board composition and responsibilities. Whether you’re considering affiliation, engaged in partnership talks, or refining an existing relationship, you’ll learn how to build an affiliation that promotes stability, improves services, and ensures long-term success.

Imagine your organization is building a large-scale independent living project for clients with discerning tastes. You know residents want to customize their new apartments. But how do you offer a wide range of options while ensuring a smooth, timely process? This session will provide a blueprint for success. Presenters will outline key elements of a successful customization process, including standardized procedures for engaging residents, technology-enabled tools to support the design process, transparent pricing and deadlines, and clear roles for project team members. You’ll return home with strategies for balancing your desire to provide a personalized experience with the need to maintain project timelines and budgets.

Extraordinary outcomes depend on extraordinary teams, whether you’re leading an expansion, repositioning an existing campus, stabilizing occupancy, or launching a major operational initiative. This session tells the story of a life plan community that built a cross-functional team to deliver a successful expansion that many believed would not resonate with its intended audience. Presenters will describe how they improved performance across operations, culture, sales, brand, design, and development through strategic decisions, bold pivots, and mindset shifts that propelled a small nonprofit community to outsized success. You’ll walk away with a replicable framework for building team chemistry and enhancing execution, along with practical tips for shifting culture and inspiring optimism.

A centralized talent acquisition framework consolidates hiring operations under a single Human Resources (HR) team and helps your organization transform recruitment into a proactive, data-driven strategy. This session will show you how centralized recruitment models enable HR teams to conduct higher-quality candidate assessments and enhance the candidate experience through consistent communication, streamlined touchpoints, and clear expectations. Presenters will share strategies to help you assess and redesign your current recruitment operations, streamline workflows, and leverage technology to drive higher returns on investment. You’ll see how a centralized approach can lower vacancy rates, improve outcomes, strengthen workforce stability, and reduce your organization’s compliance and legal risk.

External audits and reviews affect every facet of an aging services organization, whether conducted by federal agencies such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, state Medicaid departments, or managed care organizations. Understanding how these reviews will affect your organization can help you prepare for, respond to, and address enforcement outcomes. This session will help you leverage your organization’s resources and personnel—including your leadership, finance, clinical, compliance, and legal teams—to navigate external audits and reviews. Presenters will show you how to form an audit response team, assess the business, financial, clinical, and compliance risks associated with an external review, and develop strategies to manage those risks.

Partnering with academic health institutions can help your senior living organization unlock resources, foster innovation, and improve older adults’ quality of life. During this session, representatives from a university and a life plan community will describe their collaboration and explain how it created opportunities for both partners. Presenters will outline how the community gained access to cutting-edge medical research and health screenings, while university researchers collaborated with community team members and residents to co-create solutions to pressing challenges. You’ll learn how to identify and approach potential partners, bridge cultural gaps, navigate challenges, and sustain momentum. Get ready to connect aging and academia to deliver measurable benefits to all stakeholders.

Many senior living providers struggle to design communities that reflect older adults’ priorities because information about the factors shaping consumer decisions remains trapped in their data systems. This session will show you how to free that data. Presenters will explore how a multisite senior living organization unified its internal data—including survey responses, referral information, and wellness engagement statistics—to uncover the drivers of senior living decisions. They’ll share what the organization learned from its siloed data about consumer preferences, show you how to free your own data, and offer strategies for using it to design new programs and consumer outreach initiatives.

It’s no secret that the next generation of older adults seeks flexibility, lifestyle, and choice. Satellite campuses—smaller, independent-living-focused communities near a flagship campus—can help life plan communities meet these preferences and expand into desirable markets without building an on-site continuum of care. This session will explore the satellite campus trend, explain the strategic rationale for satellite developments, and assess their benefits and risks. Presenters will outline steps for evaluating satellite locations and assessing a project’s feasibility and market demand. You’ll learn how to leverage your organization’s brand, culture, and expertise across multiple sites, potentially opening new pathways to growth, revenue diversification, and enhanced market positioning.

The survey environment for long-term care providers is growing more complex as federal and state agencies refine guidance, raise expectations, and adjust priorities. This complexity often turns annual recertification and complaint surveys into disruptive, high-stress events that expose gaps in practice, documentation, and oversight. Using QAPI as a framework, this session will equip organizational leaders with the tools to stay survey-ready every day. Presenters will review emerging national and state survey trends and highlight common citations and surveyor priorities. They’ll show you how to focus on high-risk processes, develop performance improvement projects, and monitor corrective actions. You’ll get the support you need to build day-to-day practices that identify and address risks before the survey team arrives.