Julie Hieshetter

Memory Support Manager
North Hill
Needham, MA
  • 23-K. How Residents with Dementia Transform a Community’s Culture

    • Wednesday, October 28, 2026

    10:00 – 11:00 a.m.

    23-K. How Residents with Dementia Transform a Community’s Culture

    A dementia diagnosis can heighten stigma and withdrawal, leading older adults to experience social isolation and a loss of purpose. This session will explore how a life plan community developed an innovative adult day program that encourages residents living with dementia to plan twice-weekly volunteer initiatives that draw on their strengths. You’ll learn how the program fosters belonging by integrating support from other residents and offering adult day participants meaningful service opportunities, such as creating artwork for Alzheimer’s research, preparing meals for unhoused people, and arranging flowers for hospice patients. Discover how inclusion initiatives can transform campus culture and how residents can empower one another to build connection and campus-wide unity.

Angie Hoff

VP of Operations, Primary Care
National Church Residences Home and Community Services
Columbus, OH
  • 85-H. Primary Care Partnerships: How They Work, Why They Matter

    • Tuesday, October 27, 2026

    3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

    85-H. Primary Care Partnerships: How They Work, Why They Matter

    Is your senior living organization aiming to improve residents’ health outcomes but unsure how to proceed? This session will offer a practical solution: establish a partnership with an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) and a primary care medical group to deliver enhanced clinical services to residents. Presenters will describe how their multisite organization’s primary care team partnered with an ACO to establish a Medicare Shared Savings Program. You’ll learn about the partnership’s operational and financial benefits, including better care, fewer avoidable hospitalizations, longer resident stays, and lower turnover. Discover how these partnerships work, why they matter, and the steps providers can take to implement them effectively.

Colleen Hollestelle

President & CEO
Santa Marta
Olathe, KS
  • 28-E. Drive Growth by Aligning Governance, Operations, and Sales

    • Monday, October 26, 2026

    3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

    28-E. Drive Growth by Aligning Governance, Operations, and Sales

    Does your organization’s board focus on stewardship and risk, while your leaders handle operations, your marketers oversee branding, and your sales teams focus on conversions? Organizations struggle when stakeholders follow separate pathways, pursue siloed priorities, and tell different stories. This session will help you align governance, operations, marketing, and sales into a unified, credible narrative. Presenters will show you how to connect boardroom decisions to sales outcomes; what boards need to know about brand and sales; how leadership behaviors influence the brand promise; and how misalignment affects growth. You’ll learn to break down organizational silos, manage tensions, and build trust so that external messaging feels authentic and consistent.

Jonathan Hollinger

CEO/President
Pleasant View Retirement Community
Manheim, PA
  • 122-B. Cultivating Connection: Designing for Holistic Aging

    • Sunday, October 25, 2026

    2:45 – 3:45 p.m.

    122-B. Cultivating Connection: Designing for Holistic Aging

    What happens when you pair a life plan community with a multi-use space serving the wider community? This session will answer that question. Presenters will share the story of Pleasant View Communities in Manheim, PA, which transformed a farm adjacent to its campus into a community center featuring public space for educational programs, outdoor activities, public events, and a municipal library. Discover how life plan community residents find purpose and value in the community center through educational programs, gardening, and volunteer opportunities. You’ll see how land use and architectural master planning, along with local and regional partnerships, can help create innovative shared spaces that meet the needs of all stakeholders.

Kenneth Hollowell

Board Chair
Presbyterian Villages of Michigan
Southfield, MI
  • 29-F. Strengthen Your Board Through Planned Enrichment

    • Monday, October 26, 2026

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    29-F. Strengthen Your Board Through Planned Enrichment

    Knowledgeable, experienced, and engaged board members are essential to the success of senior living organizations. Yet few board members arrive at their first board meeting with all the knowledge needed to fulfill their roles. This session will explore how one organization expanded board members’ capacity by dedicating the first 60-90 minutes of its bimonthly board meetings to a wide range of enrichment activities. Presenters will outline how they implemented the revised board agenda and how it improved the board’s effectiveness. You’ll learn strategies for assessing board members’ current knowledge and addressing gaps. Discover how enrichment sessions can strengthen your board and help its members become confident change agents and change makers.

Joel Holmes

First Vice President
Greystone
Irving, TX
  • 38-B. Capital-Efficient Pathways to Meet Needs and Advance Mission

    • Sunday, October 25, 2026

    2:45 – 3:45 p.m.

    38-B. Capital-Efficient Pathways to Meet Needs and Advance Mission

    Nonprofit providers of aging services must scale their organizations to serve an older population that continues to grow each year. But how can growth be achieved when land options are limited, and expansion appears cost-prohibitive? This session will showcase a group of single-site and multisite organizations exploring capital-efficient pathways to meet local needs and advance their missions. Presenters will provide an inside look at how these organizations developed new campuses, implemented phased expansions, engaged in adaptive reuse of existing buildings, and established satellite communities. Learn how successful organizations use disciplined planning and evaluation to identify opportunities and mitigate risk. Get the guidance you need to achieve sustainable growth and capital-efficient expansion in constrained markets.

Debbie Howard

CEO
Senior Living Smart
Plymouth, MA
  • 59-A. From Blah to Brilliant: Transforming Senior Living Marketing

    • Sunday, October 25, 2026

    1:00 – 2:00 p.m.

    59-A. From Blah to Brilliant: Transforming Senior Living Marketing

    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.

Michael Hughes

Vice President, Strategic Growth and Partnerships
LeadingAge
Washington, DC
  • 52-I. Jump-Start Holistic Wellness with Part B Medicare

    • Tuesday, October 27, 2026

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    52-I. Jump-Start Holistic Wellness with Part B Medicare

    In 2024, Medicare added new fee-for-service codes to address health-related social needs and to cover services that help beneficiaries navigate the healthcare system. The new Part B codes may create payment opportunities for services you already offer at no charge. This session will outline the components and benefits of holistic wellness programs and explain how they improve health outcomes for residents and clients. Presenters will describe Part B programs that cover holistic wellness services and identify innovative technologies and practices that support service delivery. You’ll take home summaries of all relevant Part B programs, a pro forma revenue calculator for Part B income, and samples of assessments and care plans.

Maley Hunt

COO & Residential Services Administrator
LiveWell
Plantsville, CT
  • 127-G. Beyond Memory Care: Designing Brain-Healthy Communities

    • Tuesday, October 27, 2026

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    127-G. Beyond Memory Care: Designing Brain-Healthy Communities

    Do current dementia care approaches reinforce separation in senior living communities, or do they position brain health as a unifying priority for all residents? This session will highlight one organization committed to the latter. Organization leaders will describe how their community invited people living with cognitive change to co-design the environments, services, and operational decisions that define its campus. They’ll examine how this approach shifted the community’s design to support autonomy, normalcy, and shared community life while challenging assumptions about risk, elopement, and safety. Join this session to broaden your understanding of how evidence-based brain health practices can inform senior living campus design.

Jerilyn Iacono

Director of Life Enrichment
Kendal-Crosslands Communities
Kennett Square, PA
  • 89-J. Validation: Engaging Residents Living with Cognitive Change

    • Wednesday, October 28, 2026

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    89-J. Validation: Engaging Residents Living with Cognitive Change

    Can providing good care lead to operational gains for your senior living organization? This session’s presenters will answer with a categorical “yes.” They’ll describe the Validation method, a caregiving strategy that fosters engagement between caregivers and residents living with cognitive change. A Validation trainer and a LeadingAge member will explain how the method uses centering, attunement, emotion matching, and other simple practices to emphasize the care recipient’s reality rather than imposing facts. You’ll hear evidence that Validation increases cooperation, reduces the use of as-needed medication, and improves staff confidence and retention. You’ll gain simple tools to help your teams embed Validation in their standard work.

Soo Im

Market Leader
Gensler
Washington, DC
  • 123-C. Imagining New Environments to Live, Work, and Play

    • Sunday, October 25, 2026

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    123-C. Imagining New Environments to Live, Work, and Play

    Today’s older adults are living longer, staying healthier longer, and working longer. This shift is reshaping attitudes toward retirement and creating unprecedented opportunities for retirement communities to reinvent themselves. This session will examine how senior living organizations can support the evolving lifestyles of older adults by expanding services beyond community walls and designing surrounding neighborhoods to meet residents’ needs. Presenters will invite you to imagine how neighborhoods and residential communities might intersect, envision the possibilities for intergenerational or multigenerational environments within and around retirement communities, and consider how mixed-use settings might offer better living environments for today’s older adults. Explore the future of aging and be prepared to rethink your view of traditional retirement communities.

Adriene Iverson

President & CEO
Elder Care Alliance
Alameda, CA
  • 45-F. Affiliate or Go It Alone? Forming Bonds Across Faith Traditions

    • Monday, October 26, 2026

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    45-F. Affiliate or Go It Alone? Forming Bonds Across Faith Traditions

    The decision to affiliate is among the most consequential and strategic choices a board of directors can make. For faith-based organizations considering a merger with a ministry from a different faith background, the decision can be especially daunting. This session will feature three leaders from faith-based organizations that successfully affiliated with partners from different religious backgrounds. Presenters will describe their founding traditions and the key drivers behind their decision to pursue affiliation. They’ll explain how they approached the affiliation process and how they weighed religious affinities and differences when identifying and evaluating potential partners. You’ll leave this session better equipped to engage in conversations about strategic partnerships while maintaining your unique faith identity.