Mario DeLuca

Vice President of Resident Experience
Westminster Communities of Florida, Inc.
Orlando, FL
  • 76-B. Overcoming Supply Chain Hurdles in Senior Living

    • Sunday, October 25, 2026

    2:45 – 3:45 p.m.

    76-B. Overcoming Supply Chain Hurdles in Senior Living

    Nonprofit senior living organizations understand all too well how supply chain disruptions strain operations, leading to higher prices, operational disruptions, supply shortages, staff burnout, and dissatisfied residents. During this session, a representative from LeadingAge Gold Partner Value First will join LeadingAge members to share strategies for optimizing operations and overcoming supply chain hurdles. They’ll discuss the pros and cons of outsourcing operations; the impact of tariffs and workforce challenges; and how organizations can keep their supply chains open. Join the conversation to pinpoint supply chain and operational challenges and learn how your peers are tackling them.

Allison Dent

Director of Nursing
Dunwoody Village
Newtown Square, PA
  • 119-K. Easing Nursing Home Transitions for Residents and Families

    • Wednesday, October 28, 2026

    10:00 – 11:00 a.m.

    119-K. Easing Nursing Home Transitions for Residents and Families

    The Transitional Care Model (TCM) is an evidence-based intervention that reduces rehospitalizations and prevents recurring nursing home admissions among high-risk older adults. This session will explain how a life plan community adapted TCM to support residents’ transitions to long-term care. Presenters will describe the community’s transition team, which identifies residents who meet transition requirements and delivers a customized experience through time-sensitive touchpoints and care conferences with residents and their families. They will explain how the process prevents confusion, unclear expectations, care disruptions, and poor outcomes. Learn how TCM can improve care transitions in your life plan community, enrich the resident and family experience, and enhance communication across care levels.

John DiMaggio

CEO
BlueOrange Compliance
Powell, OH
  • 10-J. AI, Cybersecurity, and the Law: What You Need to Know

    • Wednesday, October 28, 2026

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    10-J. AI, Cybersecurity, and the Law: What You Need to Know

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming senior living and healthcare, offering unprecedented opportunities to improve care delivery, streamline operations, and enhance resident engagement. Unfortunately, AI can also heighten cybersecurity risks and create complex legal issues for your organization. This session will highlight privacy laws, liability risks, and contractual obligations that could affect your use of AI. Technology experts and a senior living provider will guide you through steps to evaluate AI opportunities and build a technology roadmap that minimizes risk and aligns innovation with compliance and security best practices. Join this session to explore evolving issues that senior living executives can’t afford to ignore.

Denise DiNoto

Senior Director, Partner Engagement
Intrepid Ascent
Berkeley, 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.

Robert Dirscherl

Training & Development Director
Givens Estates
Asheville, NC
  • 145-K. Growing From Within: The Power of Career Coaching

    • Wednesday, October 28, 2026

    10:00 – 11:00 a.m.

    145-K. Growing From Within: The Power of Career Coaching

    When team members see a future for themselves at your organization, they will stay, grow, and thrive. This session will show you how in-house career coaching makes that possible by establishing clear career pathways, building trust-based coaching relationships, and supporting skill development. Presenters will outline a scalable career-coaching model used by a life plan community to foster workforce engagement, increase retention, and improve organizational culture. You’ll gain tools to build your own coaching program, including strategies for identifying champions, defining success metrics, and embedding coaching into everyday workflows. Don’t miss this opportunity to create a future where every team member thrives.

Lindsay Doak

Vice President of Data and Research
Netsmart
Overland Park, KS
  • 94-B. Best Practices in Home Health and Hospice

    • Sunday, October 25, 2026

    2:45 – 3:45 p.m.

    94-B. Best Practices in Home Health and Hospice

    What strategies, structures, and processes distinguish high-performing home health and hospice organizations across the United States? This session will address that question by reviewing findings from the 2026 National Healthcare at Home Best Practices Study. Presenters will translate the study’s national findings into practical, actionable insights and share best practices for care transitions, referral management, visit utilization, symptom management, and end-of-life care planning. You’ll learn how evidence-based practices influence quality outcomes, patient experience, staff retention, and financial performance, and how external factors such as workforce shortages, payment reform, and regulations are shaping the adoption of best practices nationwide.

  • 101-F. Surviving Uncertainty to Fulfill the Home Health Promise

    • Monday, October 26, 2026

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    101-F. Surviving Uncertainty to Fulfill the Home Health Promise

    Home health agencies have faced significant financial, regulatory, and program integrity challenges for years. At the same time, demand for home-based services among Medicare beneficiaries has grown exponentially, straining the already limited capacity of home health providers. This session will explore how we reached this point. Presenters will examine threats to the sector’s sustainability, including the declining number of home health providers, the six-month nationwide moratorium on new Medicare enrollments for home health agencies, and ongoing negative payment adjustments. You’ll gain a clearer understanding of these threats and learn about new policy opportunities that could spur a reimagination of the home health benefit.

Erin Donaldson

Vice President/Director of Operations Management
LCS
Des Moines, IA
  • 141-H. What if You Could Prevent Employees from Leaving Their Jobs?

    • Tuesday, October 27, 2026

    3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

    141-H. What if You Could Prevent Employees from Leaving Their Jobs?

    In today’s labor-constrained environment, senior living organizations need more than hindsight. They need actionable foresight. This session will showcase a tool that can help. You’ll hear about Retention Radar, a predictive workforce intelligence solution that identifies employees most at risk of leaving their jobs and recommends targeted, practical interventions to support engagement and stability. Presenters will explain how Retention Radar equips Human Resources teams, operations leaders, and community administrators to interpret workforce trends and make data-informed decisions. Users of the tool will share strategies for translating predictive analytics into targeted retention interventions and explain how Retention Radar helped them build healthier teams and enhance the resident experience.

David Donohue

Resident
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.

Amy Dore

Professor & Program Director, Aging Services Leadership
Metropolitan State University of Denver
Highlands Ranch, CO
  • 135-B. Build Your Workforce by Improving the Employee Experience

    • Sunday, October 25, 2026

    2:45 – 3:45 p.m.

    135-B. Build Your Workforce by Improving the Employee Experience

    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.

  • 136-C. Promising Pathways to Aging Services Careers

    • Sunday, October 25, 2026

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    136-C. Promising Pathways to Aging Services Careers

    Young people pursue various pathways to launch careers in aging services. Which of these pathways work well, and where are the gaps? This session will offer evidence-based answers to those questions. Presenters will share findings from new national research on academic programs, internships, mentorships, and Administrator-in-Training (AIT) programs that have helped students pursue careers in aging services and gerontology. They’ll also share strategies and case studies to help you create similar programs. You’ll hear success stories about how organizations with modest budgets have attracted new talent. You’ll also take home a clear, customizable framework to reduce vacancies, strengthen career pathways, and develop the next generation of aging services leaders.

Susan Downey

Director of Healthcare
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.

Derek Dunham

President
Varsity
Wormleysburg, PA
  • 9-I. A Mission-Aligned Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence

    • Tuesday, October 27, 2026

    4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

    9-I. A Mission-Aligned Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence

    Are you intrigued by the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) but concerned about adopting it responsibly? Let representatives from a life plan community walk you through the process they used to deploy AI while staying true to their nonprofit values. This session’s presenters will describe how they launched a structured, mission-aligned AI initiative to enhance the resident experience, improve workforce efficiency, and strengthen operational resilience. You’ll learn how they conducted visioning workshops, cross-departmental discovery sessions, and data-readiness assessments, and how they addressed governance, ethics, and long-term sustainability. By the end of this session, you’ll feel empowered to launch an ongoing, measurable, and responsible AI transformation at your organization.

Jen Egizi

Executive Director, Vibrance by Garden Spot
Garden Spot Village
New Holland, PA
  • 48-G. The New Frontier: Inside Continuing Care at Home (CCaH)

    • Tuesday, October 27, 2026

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

    48-G. The New Frontier: Inside Continuing Care at Home (CCaH)

    As the desire to age in place grows among older adults, Continuing Care at Home (CCaH) programs are emerging as an innovative alternative to traditional senior living. In return for an entrance fee and monthly dues, CCaH members receive comprehensive long-term care services while remaining in their own homes. During this session, three CCaH providers will compare CCaH models, detailing their financial structures, membership designs, and operational approaches. Presenters will help you identify which CCaH model best aligns with your organization’s mission, market, and strategic goals. You’ll discover key factors that contributed to the success of organizations that have launched and grown CCaH programs, as well as the challenges they faced along the way.