Laura Jones

Senior Vice President, Operations
Pinnacle Living
Glen Allen, VA
  • 64-D. Turning Stories into Sales: How Media Coverage Can Help

    • Monday, October 26, 2026

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    64-D. Turning Stories into Sales: How Media Coverage Can Help

    Senior living professionals are familiar with traditional sales tactics but often lack experience using earned media as a strategic touchpoint with prospective residents. This session fills that knowledge gap by introducing a communication approach that builds relationships with prospects through media coverage that validates a community’s strengths, highlights resident experiences, and reinforces trust at key decision points in the prospect’s decision-making journey. Presenters will teach you the fundamentals of developing strong story ideas, pitching them to the media, and integrating media coverage into sales strategies. You’ll take home tools to help your community kick-start or enhance its media relations programs, improve conversions, and accelerate prospects’ decision-making.

  • 68-G. From Outsourced to In-House: Building a Creative Services Team

    • Tuesday, October 27, 2026

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    68-G. From Outsourced to In-House: Building a Creative Services Team

    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.

Jason Jorgenson

Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Development
LCS
Des Moines, IA
  • 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.

Nicole Jorwic

Chief Program Officer
Caring Across Generations
Washington, DC
  • 103-H. Long-Term Care Financing Reform: Has the Moment Arrived?

    • Tuesday, October 27, 2026

    3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

    103-H. Long-Term Care Financing Reform: Has the Moment Arrived?

    Medicaid cuts, the aging of the baby boomer generation, and the escalating caregiving crisis are compelling states and the federal government to confront a long-ignored issue: how Americans will pay for long-term care. It remains uncertain whether a lasting solution will come from the states, Congress, or both. But presenters in this session will argue that the opportunity for meaningful discussions about long-term care financing is finally here. Join them to explore why more people are discussing financing reform, what proposals are under consideration, and the distinct coverage, cost, and access trade-offs each entails. You’ll learn how to lend your voice to long-term care financing conversations at the state and federal levels.

Lisa Kalla

Chief Operating Officer
Saint Therese
Saint Louis Park, MN
  • 91-L. Want to Engage Your Teams? Write a Living Strategic Plan

    • Wednesday, October 28, 2026

    11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

    91-L. Want to Engage Your Teams? Write a Living Strategic Plan

    Do team members’ eyes glaze over when you mention your organization’s strategic plan? Or is the plan a living document that guides their day-to-day work? If you’re experiencing the first scenario but hoping for the second, this session is for you. Presenters will introduce you to EOS, a strategic planning model designed for weekly use and quarterly updates. Follow a multisite organization’s journey to implement EOS by defining its mission, vision, and values, addressing barriers to progress, and measuring weekly performance. You’ll learn to distill your strategic plan into a one-page document, use data to make decisions, and involve every team member in achieving organizational goals.

Cory Kallheim

General Counsel
Covenant Living Communities and Services
Skokie, IL
  • 63-C. Sales, Marketing, and Beyond: AI in Senior Living

    • Sunday, October 25, 2026

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    63-C. Sales, Marketing, and Beyond: AI in Senior Living

    Interested in leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) but concerned about maintaining a disciplined focus on privacy, legal compliance, and ethical safeguards? In this session, you’ll learn how a multisite senior living organization is achieving these goals and how you can too. Presenters will show you how AI-generated video, messaging, and design templates can expand your marketing team’s capabilities while maintaining consistent brand quality. They’ll also explain how AI can work across your organization to streamline workflows, accelerate decision-making, enhance new-hire onboarding, and support personalized learning. You’ll leave this session with a clearer understanding of how AI expands organizational capacity when implemented with intentional guardrails and a human-first philosophy.

Cliff Karklin

VP of Performance and Analytics
Fountain Digital
Independence, OH
  • 67-G. Marketing Data for CEOs: What are All These Numbers Telling Me?

    • Tuesday, October 27, 2026

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    67-G. Marketing Data for CEOs: What are All These Numbers Telling Me?

    Marketing and sales teams often provide CEOs and senior living executives with a range of data to support their conclusions about how effectively their organization is attracting, engaging, and converting consumers. But what do these numbers mean, and how can you use them to ask the right questions, generate new inquiries and increase sales? This session is designed for executive leaders who want a clearer understanding of the difference between an inquiry and a lead, what a conversion rate is and isn’t, and how to act on this information. Presenters will also explain the difference between marketing and sales teams and how they should work together to maximize results. You’ll leave prepared to make informed decisions that will boost your organization’s performance.

Keith Kasin

Chief Operating Officer
Hillcrest
La Verne, CA
  • 5-E. Maximize the Benefits of Bidirectional Data Exchange

    • Monday, October 26, 2026

    3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

    5-E. Maximize the Benefits of Bidirectional Data Exchange

    Bidirectional data exchange the process of sending and receiving data across organizations and care sectors is increasingly common nationwide thanks to federal interoperability initiatives. This session will show how aging services providers can maximize the benefits of this exchange for care delivery and business operations. Presenters will discuss how their life plan communities use health information exchanges to support coordinated care during care transitions, enhance emergency preparedness, and better serve older adults with multiple chronic conditions. You’ll also learn how data exchange supports health plan contract negotiations, population outcome reporting, and point-of-care interventions.

Gustave Keach-Longo

President/CEO
The Towers at Tower Lane
New Haven, CT
  • 130-J. Design with Data: Reducing Loneliness in Senior Housing

    • Wednesday, October 28, 2026

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    130-J. Design with Data: Reducing Loneliness in Senior Housing

    Social architecture deliberately designs environments to shape human behavior and foster meaningful connections. This session will show how a senior housing development used this approach to design a 30,000-square-foot ground-floor renovation. Presenters will explain how they tracked residents’ engagement and support needs using a customized, artificial intelligence-enabled platform, then applied proxemics the study of how humans use physical space and distance to communicate to determine hallway widths, select furniture, and set seating capacity. You’ll learn the science behind the community’s planning process and consider how isolation measurement tools might help you design spaces that encourage connection.

Liz Keller

Resident Technology Engagement Manager
Ingleside
Rockville, MD
  • 6-F. Building an Integrated System for Resident Engagement

    • Monday, October 26, 2026

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    6-F. Building an Integrated System for Resident Engagement

    Life plan communities offer residents myriad opportunities to participate in rich programming across a range of digital platforms. But how can providers prevent technology saturation and uneven adoption? This session will highlight one provider’s technology-enabled engagement system, which integrates digital communication platforms, automation, data and analytics, and artificial intelligence tools. Presenters will describe the system’s components, including streaming, video libraries, and in-house digital channels; dashboards that help community leaders understand engagement patterns; and automation solutions that reduce manual tasks for program staff. You’ll return home with a framework for viewing resident engagement as a scalable system rather than a collection of disconnected tools.

Jenna Kellerman

Senior Director, Workforce
PHI National
New York, NY
  • 146-L. How a Universal Worker Model Boosts Satisfaction and Retention

    • Wednesday, October 28, 2026

    11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

    146-L. How a Universal Worker Model Boosts Satisfaction and Retention

    Direct care professionals face persistent challenges, including high turnover, low wages, and limited opportunities for career advancement. This session will showcase a promising solution: the Universal Direct Care Workforce Initiative. This career advancement model features immersive training for new hires, specialty training in dementia and behavioral health, and a “Care Integration Senior Aide” who documents and reports clients’ clinical conditions to the care team. A representative from PHI, a national workforce organization, will share data from the initiative’s first year, and a home care partner will describe evidence-based practices implemented through the program. You’ll learn how this model improves the quality of care and boosts workforce satisfaction and retention.

Gates Kellett

Managing Principal
Gates Development Group, LLC
Atlanta, GA
  • 56-K. Preserving and Expanding your Affordable Housing Portfolio

    • Wednesday, October 28, 2026

    10:00 – 11:00 a.m.

    56-K. Preserving and Expanding your Affordable Housing Portfolio

    The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development no longer funds the development and construction of new housing communities for older adults with the lowest incomes. This shift in the funding environment makes preserving the existing affordable housing stock even more critical in today’s expanding low-income senior market. This session will help providers become more creative, resourceful, and sophisticated as they expand their missions and housing portfolios. Presenters will introduce a core set of financing tools to help you preserve, build, and acquire new affordable housing, and present a case study that details the ups and downs of preservation and expansion initiatives.

Sean Kelly

President & CEO
Front Porch
Glendale, CA
  • 102-G. CCRC Statutes for Growth-Minded Multi-State Providers

    • Tuesday, October 27, 2026

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    102-G. CCRC Statutes for Growth-Minded Multi-State Providers

    Looking to expand your organizational footprint by establishing life plan communities in multiple states? Your success will depend on how well you understand each new state’s life plan community statutes. This session will outline the benefits and risks of expanding across state lines to establish life plan communities. An expert panel of multi-state executives, financial experts, and LeadingAge state partners will discuss the strategic, practical, and legal requirements of multi-state expansion and guide you in assessing each new state’s receptivity to life plan communities. A review of existing state laws and legislative trends will round out the session. You’ll gain access to LeadingAge tools and resources to inform your decision-making.