Brittney Thoreson

Vice President of Strategy and Development
Vivie
Alexandria, MN, USA
  • 129-D. The Built Environment: A Tool for Preventing Falls

    • Monday, November 03, 2025

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    129-D. The Built Environment: A Tool for Preventing Falls

    Senior living providers have an obligation to protect residents and staff from falls while helping them maintain their autonomy and enhancing their quality of life. This session will explore essential, yet often overlooked, tools to help you meet that obligation: the buildings where residents and team members live and work. Presenters will demonstrate how simple modifications to existing structures or new construction in your skilled nursing, transitional care, assisted living, and memory care settings can prevent falls and improve outcomes for residents and staff. Join this session to pinpoint specific elements of your organization’s built environment that can help you prevent, detect, and protect against falls and their adverse outcomes.

Erica Thrash-Sall

CEO
Horizon House
Seattle, WA, USA
  • 96-G. Body & Soul: Connecting Spirituality, Health, and Wellness

    • Tuesday, November 04, 2025

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    96-G. Body & Soul: Connecting Spirituality, Health, and Wellness

    Spiritual care helps older adults find purpose, increase resilience, build coping mechanisms, and address concerns about suffering and mortality. This session will explore innovative approaches to meeting residents’ increasingly diverse cultural and religious needs. Presenters will discuss activities that nurture spirituality, such as nature outings, organized social interactions, and dedicated spaces for prayer or meditation. They’ll also demonstrate how training staff to provide high-quality spiritual care can positively impact employee morale, job satisfaction, and personal growth. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of the link between spirituality and health, the benefits of integrating residents’ spiritual preferences into their care plans, and the value of making high-quality spiritual care a strategic and mission priority for your organization.

Cynthia Thurlow Cruver

President and CEO
3rd3rd Marketing
Vashon, WA, USA
  • 63-F. Reaching Out to Solo Agers to Increase Sales and Diversity

    • Monday, November 03, 2025

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    63-F. Reaching Out to Solo Agers to Increase Sales and Diversity

    Senior living communities often face two marketing challenges: filling one-bedroom and studio apartments and increasing diversity within their resident populations. This session will explore how communities can achieve both goals by reaching out to solo agers, including those from diverse cultural backgrounds, the LGBTQ+ community, and other historically underrepresented groups. Presenters will examine the unique needs and aspirations of solo agers while sharing effective marketing strategies designed to attract them to senior living communities. You’ll gain tips for hosting marketing events that showcase smaller residential units that have traditionally remained vacant and acquire insights to help you connect with prospective residents from the Black, Latino, Asian, and LGBTQ+ communities.

Jennifer Thurman

Clinical Utilization Manager
Immanuel Communities
Omaha, NE, USA
  • 76-D. Managing Care Transitions Across the Continuum

    • Monday, November 03, 2025

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    76-D. Managing Care Transitions Across the Continuum

    Immanuel, a multi-site senior living provider based in Omaha, NE, operates independent living, assisted living, and memory support communities, in addition to three Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE). This session will focus on how the organization developed a unique approach to managing care transitions in its PACE program and then applied that model to all its locations and campuses. Presenters will describe the service gaps that prompted Immanuel to establish the roles of a Care Transition Nurse Manager in its PACE programs and Care Navigator in its communities. You’ll learn how the care transitions initiative was developed and its impact on costs, staff satisfaction, and quality of life for residents and participants.

Mark Timmons

Expert in Lived Experience, Advisory Board Member
Dementia Action Alliance
Boston, MA, USA
  • 92-C. Placing Individuals with Dementia at the Head of the Table

    • Sunday, November 02, 2025

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    92-C. Placing Individuals with Dementia at the Head of the Table

    Have you ever participated in a meeting between a healthcare provider and a person living with dementia or mild cognitive impairment? You may have noticed an unsettling practice. The healthcare professional likely spoke to the caregiver instead of addressing the person with lived experience. This session will offer strategies to ensure that individuals with dementia always sit at the head of the table during discussions about them. Presenters who are living with dementia and mild cognitive impairment will help you understand how they lost, and eventually regained, decision-making authority after a dementia diagnosis. Representatives from the Dementia Action Alliance will offer tips for providing genuine, person-directed care that engages individuals with dementia at every step.

Jamie Timoteo

Partner
Plante Moran
Chicago, IL
  • 135-I. Design and Construction: A Better Way to Keep Budgets on Track

    • Tuesday, November 04, 2025

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    135-I. Design and Construction: A Better Way to Keep Budgets on Track

    High interest rates and construction costs have many organizations struggling to complete senior living projects within budget. Unfortunately, budget overruns often occur late in the construction process, forcing project teams to cut building costs after making significant investments in the design process. This session will present a better approach. Senior living construction experts will demonstrate how to use pre-design programming to set your projects up for success. You’ll learn how to transform financial projections, market demand data, and consumer preferences into detailed project requirements, identify essential construction process components and how each contributes to the total cost, and establish a realistic project scope. This practical guidance will help ensure your project objectives align with your budget.

Nathan Torno

Senior Director of Sales & Marketing
Friendship Village Senior Living Communities
St. Louis, MO, USA
  • 54-J. Diversifying Revenue in Life Plan Communities

    • Wednesday, November 05, 2025

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    54-J. Diversifying Revenue in Life Plan Communities

    Looking to boost revenue by serving older adults before they move to your life plan community? Friendship Village Senior Services in St. Louis, MO, has a few ideas for you. This session will showcase two Friendship Village membership programs that offer prospective residents the opportunity to participate in social events, use community amenities, and access comprehensive campus-based health services. These members also have access to a personal concierge and an exclusive member only app. Discover how these programs shorten the sales cycle, reduce barriers to senior living residency, help fill hard-to-sell small apartments, and increase downstream revenue for ancillary services like home care, private duty, and hospice.

Mark Traphagen

VP of Product Marketing & Training
seoClarity
Buffalo Grove, IL, United States
  • 65-H. How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Consumers Find You Online

    • Tuesday, November 04, 2025

    3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

    65-H. How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Consumers Find You Online

    At least 30% of moves to life plan communities occur after prospective residents search for retirement options using online search tools. This session will show you how to capitalize on this new trend by paying closer attention to search engine optimization (SEO), a method for presenting website content so search engines like Google can help consumers find you online. Presenters will show you how to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve SEO and boost your online visibility. You’ll also get tips for using AI-driven tools to automate online tasks, enhance the quality of your web content, establish authority in niche topic areas, and achieve significant growth in visibility and user engagement.

Jeffrey Trendel

Deputy Commissioner
North Carolina Department of Insurance
Raleigh, NC, USA
  • 120-I. Can State Statutes Protect Life Plan Communities from Bankruptcy?

    • Tuesday, November 04, 2025

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    120-I. Can State Statutes Protect Life Plan Communities from Bankruptcy?

    The rare occurrences of bankruptcy among life plan communities in recent years have raised a compelling and provocative question: What role should state laws play in protecting these communities from insolvency? This session will explore that question. Presenters will provide an overview of the bankruptcy protections that certain states extend to life plan communities through existing statutes. They will also discuss the effects of state actions that either prevent a life plan community’s bankruptcy or worsen a community’s fragile financial position. Don’t miss this opportunity to join experts in the field as they delve into thought-provoking questions about the financial health of life plan communities.

Shirley Turner

Director of Sales & Marketing
Hillcrest
La Verne, CA, USA
  • 63-F. Reaching Out to Solo Agers to Increase Sales and Diversity

    • Monday, November 03, 2025

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    63-F. Reaching Out to Solo Agers to Increase Sales and Diversity

    Senior living communities often face two marketing challenges: filling one-bedroom and studio apartments and increasing diversity within their resident populations. This session will explore how communities can achieve both goals by reaching out to solo agers, including those from diverse cultural backgrounds, the LGBTQ+ community, and other historically underrepresented groups. Presenters will examine the unique needs and aspirations of solo agers while sharing effective marketing strategies designed to attract them to senior living communities. You’ll gain tips for hosting marketing events that showcase smaller residential units that have traditionally remained vacant and acquire insights to help you connect with prospective residents from the Black, Latino, Asian, and LGBTQ+ communities.

Kelli Underhill

VP HR, Workforce Solutions
Kintura
Greensboro, NC, USA
  • 144-E. It’s Time to Rethink Your Training Strategies

    • Monday, November 03, 2025

    3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

    144-E. It’s Time to Rethink Your Training Strategies

    Senior living communities excel at developing “compliance” training programs to meet legal requirements. However, they often overlook the need for “learning and development” training programs that emphasize employee engagement, service excellence, and clinical outcomes. This session will challenge the status quo by recommending that providers adopt a more intentional training strategy. Presenters will share examples of aging services organizations that have used learning and development strategies to redesign an employee orientation program, create an award-winning customer service program, and develop an in-house leadership academy. You’ll gain tools to evaluate your organization’s learning and development offerings and find inspiration to rethink your training approach.

Ben Unkle

President & CEO
Westminster Canterbury on Chesapeake Bay
Virginia Beach, VA, USA
  • 41-A. The ABCs of Credit Ratings: A Guide for Life Plan Communities

    • Sunday, November 02, 2025

    1:00 – 2:00 p.m.

    41-A. The ABCs of Credit Ratings: A Guide for Life Plan Communities

    Life plan community leaders, financial officers, and strategic planners must have a solid understanding of credit ratings before they can help their organizations secure financing on favorable terms. During this session, Fitch Ratings, along with a diverse panel of providers from multi-site and single-site communities will present an overview of credit ratings, explain how to obtain one, and offer guidance on incorporating credit rating considerations into your strategic planning. You’ll receive tips for aligning capital projects and funding needs with your community’s credit profile, identifying and mitigating risks that could negatively impact your rating, and implementing practices that enhance credit strength. Prepare to improve your community’s credit profile and secure the resources necessary for growth and sustainability.