Cara Silletto

President and Chief Retention Officer
Magnet Culture, formerly Crescendo Strategies
Jeffersonville, IN
  • 148-I. Your Executive Playbook for Retaining Talent

    • Tuesday, October 29, 2024

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    148-I. Your Executive Playbook for Retaining Talent

    Are you looking for new ways to slash turnover rates and create a team that’s here to stay? Then this session is for you. Presenters will help you achieve retention success by retooling your Human Resources team to ensure long-term retention success and revamping the new-hire experience to keep fresh talent on the job for more than 90 days. Whether you’re losing entry-level hires or seasoned leaders, this session will give you an executive playbook for retaining talent you can’t afford to lose and fostering a workplace where people want to stay and grow with you. You’ll return home prepared to make fundamental changes to improve productivity and quality of care while ensuring your organization’s long-term sustainability.

Carol Silver-Elliott

President & CEO
Jewish Home Family
Rockleigh, NJ
  • 36-J. Pursuing Health Equity for Community-Dwelling Older Adults

    • Wednesday, October 30, 2024

    8:00 – 9:00 a.m.

    36-J. Pursuing Health Equity for Community-Dwelling Older Adults

    Representatives of three New Jersey-based aging services organizations will be on hand during this session to describe their participation in a regional collaborative that addresses inequities that community-dwelling older adults encounter when accessing preventive and primary care. Presenters will describe the Leaders in Equity and Diversity collaborative and share its successes, lessons learned, pitfalls encountered, and plans to enhance and expand its efforts to identify and address social factors that affect health. Learn how to partner with community-based organizations to combat inequities, identify barriers presented by the social determinants of health, and address unmet needs for care and services among community-dwelling older adults.

Steve Silverman

Resident
Wake Robin
Shelburne, VT
  • 90-C. Saving the Planet One Life Plan Community at a Time

    • Sunday, October 27, 2024

    4:00 – 5:00 p.m.

    90-C. Saving the Planet One Life Plan Community at a Time

    Wake Robins, a life plan community in Shelbourne, VT, is committed to nurturing and protecting the environment. This session will provide an overview of how the community lives out that commitment in its daily operations and through resident engagement committees promoting climate change awareness. Presenters will showcase the community’s earth-friendly groundskeeping practices, which emphasize the use of native plants, herbicide-free care, a comprehensive forestry plan, and electric lawn maintenance. They’ll share the results of the Flexible Load pilot program Wake Robins is implementing with its local electric company and its strategies to reduce food waste through composting and biodigesters. You’ll hear about the community’s success stories, challenges, and lessons learned on its journey to environmental sustainability.

Chia-Lin Simmons

CEO
LogicMark
Louisville, KY
  • 37-K. Intersectionality in Action: Building Inclusive Leadership

    • Wednesday, October 30, 2024

    9:30 – 10:30 a.m.

    37-K. Intersectionality in Action: Building Inclusive Leadership

    Senior living organizations have made strides in their efforts to increase diversity from the bottom up. Now, it’s time to help women and minorities advance beyond middle management and into leadership roles. During this session, Chia-Lin Simmons, CEO of the technology company LogicMark, will stress the importance of intersectionality: the interconnected nature of social categorizations like race, class, and gender. Simmons will use her experience as a woman of color in the tech industry to describe how overlapping and independent systems of discrimination or disadvantage can create blind spots that prevent certain groups from developing their skills and progressing into leadership roles. She’ll also identify critical next steps to promote a more equitable and inclusive workplace.

Sarah Simpson

Chief Business Officer
Cardinal Ritter Senior Services (HUD)
St Louis, MO
  • 18-E. What Do Residents Think of Your New Development Project?

    • Monday, October 28, 2024

    3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

    18-E. What Do Residents Think of Your New Development Project?

    Imagine that you’re planning a renovation or new addition to your campus. You form a dream team of experienced professionals, including the developer, architect, interior designer, general contractor, and a winning sales and marketing team. You think your team is now complete, but you’re wrong. As this session will illustrate, engaging residents as participants in deciding what happens to the place they call home, may result in greater overall satisfaction. Presenters will explore why resident feedback is important, how to gather that feedback, who should be involved, and when they should be engaged.

Bonnie Skobel

Executive Director
Trinity Landing
Wilmington, NC
  • 55-B. Identify and Build on Your Community’s Unique Strengths

    • Sunday, October 27, 2024

    2:30 – 3:30 p.m.

    55-B. Identify and Build on Your Community’s Unique Strengths

    Whether you are a new community or one that has been around for decades, it’s more important than ever to establish a distinct market niche. That’s what Trinity Landing did. The Life Plan Community in Wilmington, NC, began planning and preparing for its opening by solidifying a unique position in the market and using it to create a clear competitive advantage. During this session, you’ll hear from the financial advisor, marketing firm, and sales team how to build a brand around your community’s unique selling points and capitalize on its unique strengths.

Philip Sloane

Geriatrician and Distinguished Professor
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC
  • 109-F. We Wrote a Musical: Fostering A Culture of Creative Resident Collaboration

    • Monday, October 28, 2024

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    109-F. We Wrote a Musical: Fostering A Culture of Creative Resident Collaboration

    When life plan communities create conditions that nurture spontaneous creative activity, the results can be spectacular for individuals and the community. That’s what happened at Carolina Meadows in Chapel Hill, NC. Community residents wrote and performed an original musical called Movin’ for more than 1,000 people during five performances in 2023. The musical addressed such themes as retirement, unspoken community rules, death, widowhood, new relationships, hip fractures, and early dementia. This session will combine video footage of performances and rehearsals with presentations by the show’s resident organizer and music director, a geriatrician involved in the project, and the community’s administrator. Join this session to discover how resident-generated creative activity can enhance community spirit.

Ashlea Smalley

National Director of Life Enrichment and Memory Care
Grace Management
Minneapolis, MN
  • 13-L. Using Technology to Increase Staff Retention

    • Wednesday, October 30, 2024

    11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

    13-L. Using Technology to Increase Staff Retention

    Senior living communities are currently experiencing an 85% annual staff turnover rate, according to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care. Why is our field experiencing so much churn? And can technology solutions help reduce it? This session will explore ways to leverage technology to increase staff satisfaction, reduce team member stress, and allow caregivers to spend more time building fulfilling relationships with residents. Presenters will show you how to use technology solutions to cultivate staff communication, reduce the time team members spend completing time-consuming manual processes, and monitor community performance so areas of deficiency get more support. Learn how to use technology to involve your entire team in promoting resident well-being and engagement.

Jennifer Sodo

Senior Living Market Leader
Eppstein Uhen Architects
Milwaukee, WI
  • 23-J. Advancing Sustainability Efforts While Reinforcing Mission and Values

    • Wednesday, October 30, 2024

    8:00 – 9:00 a.m.

    23-J. Advancing Sustainability Efforts While Reinforcing Mission and Values

    Cedar Community in West Bend, WI, is committed to protecting the environment and being a good neighbor in the communities where its five campuses are located. The organization backed up that commitment by giving the Cedar Lakes Conservation Foundation 100 acres of land in a primary environmental corridor. This session will explore how Cedar Community’s efforts to promote ecological sustainability have affected its marketing, public relations, fundraising, and operations. Presenters will offer tips for addressing sustainability issues while planning new construction, repositioning, and renovation work. Discover how powerful storytelling about sustainable design can garner stakeholder support, improve marketing efforts, and elevate organizational mission.

  • 146-H. Three Ingredients for an Engaged Workforce

    • Tuesday, October 29, 2024

    3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

    146-H. Three Ingredients for an Engaged Workforce

    Aging services providers won’t achieve a stable workforce unless they make sure employees are engaged in their organization’s culture. In this session, professionals in the field of aging services will identify the ingredients for promoting that engagement: people, place, and technology. A human resource professional will explain how Cedar Community in West Bend, WI, nurtures a culture of belonging among the people who work there. An architect will explore how the design of physical space can foster employee engagement. Finally, a representative of WeCare Connect will show you how to use technology to collect employee feedback that could lead to organizational change. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to make employee engagement a priority in your organization.

Gerald Solomon

Sun Health Services Board of Directors
Sun Health
Surprise, AZ
  • 49-J. You Can Create an Inspiring and Impactful Strategic Plan

    • Wednesday, October 30, 2024

    8:00 – 9:00 a.m.

    49-J. You Can Create an Inspiring and Impactful Strategic Plan

    An organization’s strategic plan typically provides an inspiring picture of the future, but after completion, it is frequently set aside with little or no follow-through. This session will present an alternative. Representatives of Sun Health in Surprise, AZ, will describe how their board of directors created an inspiring and impactful strategic plan that challenges the Sun Health team to move the organization into the future. Presenters will share their design for a repeatable, effective strategic planning process that educates key stakeholders and follows a methodology for translating the plan into actionable, trackable goals. You’ll take home tips for developing a creative vision and strategy for your organization.

Elizabeth Soto

Diversity Consultant
Landis Communities
Lititz, PA
  • 53-A. Senior Living: Revitalizing and Energizing Communities

    • Sunday, October 27, 2024

    1:00 – 2:00 p.m.

    53-A. Senior Living: Revitalizing and Energizing Communities

    Nonprofit senior living organizations are redefining themselves as catalysts that revitalize and energize the communities in which they operate. This session will explore how Landis Communities has taken steps to revitalize and energize its Lancaster County, PA community. Presenters will describe how the organization’s affiliation strategy fueled its sustainability in a community it has served for over a century. They’ll explain how Landis Communities developed a satellite middle-market product and how it adopted a more holistic approach to dementia care so it could serve people with cognitive impairment who are living in their own homes. Review the historical evolution of this nonprofit senior living organization and learn from its example how your organization can remain relevant, robust, and innovative.

Jeremy Southerland

Senior Living Planning Strategist
Washington, DC
  • 19-F. Are You Ready to Develop an Active Adult Community?

    • Monday, October 28, 2024

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    19-F. Are You Ready to Develop an Active Adult Community?

    Active Adult communities are quickly emerging as the new frontier in aging services. This session will examine the business case for these 55+ developments, which offer resort-type amenities, social activities, and a range of housing options, from stand-alone residential products with no services to integrated developments featuring an extensive care network. Presenters will share research, benchmarking data, and a cross-market perspective as they explore opportunities for established care providers to develop Active Adult communities alone or in partnership with outside developers. Get tips on designing the site, buildings, and residential units for an Active Adult community that will appeal to a new generation of older adults.