Meet Our Pioneers

Penny Cook likes to say her life has come full circle.

Her current position as President and CEO of Pioneer Network is the culmination of personal and professional experiences that have prepared her for the opportunity to fulfill a life-long goal: To change our culture in terms of how we manage health care in our country, how we approach care for older adults, and how we as a society view aging.

Penny was born and raised in Binghamton, New York. Her earliest memories center around her grandmother, a Slovak woman who was small in stature but a tower of strength and a major influence on her life. While Penny’s parents both worked, her grandmother taught her to cook, to knit, and to garden. She also set an example of caring for friends and family members who were older and needed help caring for themselves. It was in Penny’s childhood that she was first exposed to nursing homes and the indignities to which older adults were often treated.

When she was a junior in college, Penny’s father, Lou, became ill and died that year. She was enrolled in what is now Binghamton University as a biology major with the goal to attend medical school and become a doctor. The habits of self-discipline, dedication and commitment she had fostered as a competitive baton twirler came into play. She worked full-time as a manager at Wendy’s while attending classes full-time and also being with her father before he died. In order to better juggle all her responsibilities, she changed her major from biology to anthropology with a focus on medical anthropology.

After receiving her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology, Penny’s next academic steps were determined by considering her family situation, the influence of her grandmother, her experience in being around older adults her entire life, her father’s illness, and the fact that she was thrust into the health care system at an early age.

“I knew I wanted to do something in the realm of health care.” One of her first internships in the world of aging services was at an adult day care center. “I knew right from the start that that was the population I wanted to work with.”

From that first internship, Penny has not deviated from that world. She got her Masters in Social Work with a focus on aging and health care from Albany University. Her first job out of college was at a university-based hospital in Rochester, New York. Early on, she met Rose Marie Fagan and Carter Williams, two giants in the world of aging services who would become founders of Pioneer Network. Since then, she has worked as an advocate, worked in policy, and helped write legislation in her current home state of Colorado.

Nearly thirty years later after landing her first hospital job, Penny is President and CEO of Pioneer Network, a position that holds great personal meaning for her. “My thought has always been that our system needs to change. That we don’t do a good job of providing the type of care and support needed for an individual. So now I run an organization that’s all about individualized care and support as we grow older. And the fact that I had the founders of Pioneer Network as the foundation of my career carries such positive irony.”

It’s been full circle.

Today, Penny takes great personal satisfaction and joy from spending time with her two grown sons Brian and Jonny, and her cat, Bells. Brian works in digital advertising and Jonny is a chef. “I would say my greatest accomplishment in life is raising these two young men who are now independent and living their own lives the way they want to live them.”

She still has more she wants to do. “If I can make an impact on one thing, I would like to impact the negative view we as a society have of growing older. To help people see that aging isn’t bad. That growing older is a privilege that we have; that it is a part of life. A positive part of life.”

Those who best serve others deserve the very best. Cathy Lieblich has devoted her life’s work to changing the way our society treats our elders and improving their quality of life. Her passion for this goal grew out of her relationship with her grandparents who came to live in her childhood home when she was in high school. Cathy became especially close to her grandmother who asked “why do they throw old people into garbage cans?” referring to the traditional institutional nursing home.

Cathy was born in New York City on May 15, 1956. She grew up on Long Island with two brothers, one six years older and one nine years older than her, and two loving parents. Her brothers left for college when Cathy was in middle school. Tragically, one of Cathy’s brothers, the one who was six years older, died in 1990 which only strengthened Cathy’s dedication to serving others.

Cathy’s father joined some of his family in the fur business following his return from World War II and her mother worked with him when he had his own business years later. The family would spend time going to the movies and bowling together as well as Broadway shows and engaging in a host of summer activities at the nearby country club. When not with her family, Cathy spent time with her friends, going to movies, the bowling alley or hanging out at the mall.

School was a great experience for Cathy. While in high school, she was involved in an innovative program at her public high school, called “School within a School” which was considered a “Democratic Learning Community,” where she and her classmates called their teachers by their first names and Cathy even taught algebra classes to some of her fellow classmates who were struggling with the subject. When Cathy’s grandparents moved in, she learned a lot from their life experience.

Cathy obtained her bachelor’s degree from The Johns Hopkins University and then went to obtain a master’s degree from The School of Social Service Administration at the The University of Chicago. Her decision to go to social work school happened in college when Cathy realized that she wanted to devote her career to changing the way our society treats our elders due to her relationship with her grandmother and that social work would help her do that. Since obtaining her master’s degree in 1980, Cathy has worked in various capacities on the local, state and national levels in the field of aging. Her career has culminated in her work for and with Pioneer Network, an organization she has been involved with since 2001 (first as a volunteer and then a staff person).

Cathy is proud of her career accomplishments as well as her role as a wife and mother. She has been married since 1989 and has two adult daughters. She is also proud of her friendships and advocacy work, both paid and volunteer. Cathy has learned the following lessons from her life experience:

1. Try different experiences until you find what speaks to you.
2. Don’t be afraid of change or to take on new challenges despite the initial anxiety these adjustments might cause.
3. Look for teachers throughout your life who can guide and mentor you and then become a mentor to others.
4. Realize that relationships and social engagement is what adds great dimension and meaning to one’s life. Make connections and use those connections to better yourself and help others.
5. Be proud of what you accomplish in life and keep doing that which gives your life meaning and fulfillment.

A legacy of caring service speaks to these lessons learned.

Chicago native Joan Devine did not realize it at the time, but her internship in rural Mississippi more than 40 years ago set her on an unexpected course toward her life’s work. After earning her degree in music education and music therapy from Western Illinois University in 1978, she relocated to the small city of Ellisville, Miss., for a six-month internship at the Ellisville State School to introduce music to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Though the school at the time had few resources, she relished the opportunity, she says. But she especially enjoyed instructing a group of senior adults. “They were fascinating people,” says Joan. “Some hadn’t been off the campus in years. So, I took them out, and we did a resonator bell choir at local churches. That was my first exposure to working with elders.” For Joan, Mississippi may have seemed a world away from Chicago’s South Side, where she grew up. She was born on July 7, 1955, to Pat Petterson [cq], a homemaker, and Don Petterson, a general contractor. But Joan never knew her father. That is because in 1956, when Joan was just a year old, he died at age 29. Petterson became ill one September weekend that year. In the beginning, doctors told Joan’s mother that he had polio, most likely as a casualty in the national polio epidemic of the time.

As his condition worsened, doctors placed him in an iron lung, but just days after falling ill, he died. As it turned out, an autopsy, controversial at that time, but done at her mother’s insistence with the hope that it might help others, revealed, that her father did not have polio after all, but a brain tumor that had caused paralysis and other symptoms that mimicked polio. “Learning of this years later demonstrated how strong a woman my mother was,” Joan says. Widowed at 28, Pat Petterson had Joan and her two older sisters, Ann Marie, age 3, and 2-year-old Barbara (Barb), to raise. But she managed with help from her brother, step-father and father-in-law, who became father figures to the girls. Despite a childhood different from most of her friends, Joan says she had “a fun and interesting childhood with memories of mom dating and times spent at the family cottage on Dewey Lake in Western Michigan.” “I loved to sing,” she says, “and my sisters and I would put on little plays in our garage.” Nearly a decade later, Joan’s mother met Bill Dawkins through mutual friends, and they married when Joan was 10. The couple eventually gave birth to Joan’s half-sister, Mary Frances.

Joan graduated from Homewood Flossmoor High School in 1973 and enrolled at Western Illinois University. There, she joined a swing choir called Newcomers. “We wore the little short skirts and sang and danced,” she says. Through Newcomers, Joan met her husband of 41 years, also named Pat, who was the group’s sound engineer. They married the same day as graduation in 1978, Joan says, and, after completing her Mississippi internship, the couple eventually moved to the Chicago area. There, she accepted a job as activities director for a nursing home. Two years later, they settled in Kankakee, Ill., where their two daughters, Colleen and Shari, were born in 1981 and 1982. By then, Joan says, she felt she needed a change. A neighbor, who was a nurse, influenced her decision to pursue a nursing degree. So she enrolled in Kankakee Community College’s RN program. After earning her degree in 1985, she and her daughters moved to St. Louis, where Pat had already relocated for a job with the defense contractor McDonnell Douglas. In St. Louis, Joan worked for 12 years at SSM DePaul Health Center and held a number of positions, including clinical director of the surgery and oncology units and manager of a skilled nursing unit.

In 2001, she became the clinical services director at St. Andrew’s Management Services (STAMS), which oversaw long-term care communities. Afterward, in 2006, she moved to Lutheran Senior Services(LSS). During her time at both STAMS and LSS, Joan had the opportunity to lead culture change initiatives and advance person-centered practices in the organizations. After leaving LSS in 2016, Joan began consulting through her LLC, whose motto is “Guiding Care Partners on their journey 2 home” and became a Certified Eden Educator and Mentor. And then, an opportunity came her way that was the chance of a lifetime. Pioneer Network, whose mission is to create deep system change in the culture of ageing, created the position of director of education. Joan, who had worked with the team at Pioneer Network through her involvement in the Missouri state culture change coalition, was thrilled to assume this new role. “I love it,” says Joan, whose duties include oversight for the organization’s educational programs including the annual conference and webinars. “I’ve met so many incredible people who have made such a difference in the area of long-term care and elder care.” On her off days, Joan is an avid walker, with a daily goal of 10,000 steps which she has missed only a handful of times in the past five years. She plans to join a chorus this fall and get back to her love of music and she and Pat enjoy traveling, with a favorite destination being rural Idaho where their eldest daughter Colleen lives with her husband and five children. Closer to home is daughter Shari and her husband and four children. Joan says her children and grandchildren are her legacy. And that being grandmother to these nine incredible grandchildren is the best thing ever. “But I’d like to think I made a difference in long-term and senior care, too.”

 

Barbara didn’t set out to work in aging, but looking back, her career path seems preordained. The baby of her family by more than a decade, she grew up determined to keep up with big sister Diana. She was also closer to her mom, her aunts and her Grandma Stella than to most kids her age. “I was always around older people,” she says. “I could talk to anybody older than me.”

Barbara Jean Sepich was born October 26, 1959 and raised in Bethel Park, PA, the daughter of Raymond Sepich, a drafting engineer for Westinghouse and Catherine (K.K.) Sepich, a homemaker. Sports were her first love; she played volleyball, softball and golf in high school, and golf and rugby in college. But she was also a good student and a closet Barbie fan, who spent hours decorating homes for her fashion dolls. She went to Penn State planning to major in plant science – until ten weeks in a fungus lab convinced her to switch to health planning and administration.

After graduating in 1981, Barbara did stints as an athletic trainer and as a coordinator for emergency medical services. She spent a year at Kelly Healthcare, a provider of home care services, before going to work for Schneider Health Services. There, as director of operations, she managed over 400 long-term care beds and discovered that long-term care was where her talents and interests aligned.

Over the next two decades, Barbara rose through the ranks of the industry, taking on increasing responsibilities at a variety of hospitals and senior care companies in Pennsylvania. By 2011, she was in her fourth year as president of Cornerstone Senior Communities, which operates assisted living facilities, and in her sixth year on the Board of a non-profit senior care provider Cedars Group of Companies. She had also established a reputation as a start-up and turnaround specialist.

But personally and professionally Barbara was ready for a change. Her 23-year marriage had ended, and overwork was starting to take its toll. So she left Cornerstone and Cedars to begin to rethink her goals. In 2013, she took a job at Genesis Rehab Services which sent her to China to oversee the building of acute rehab, senior living and wellness centers. It was a great experience, but an unexpected death in her family made her realize she wanted to be closer to home.

In 2015, Barbara moved to rural Pennsylvania to work with WRC Senior Services, which provides the full continuum of services for seniors. Over the past couple years, she’s gotten into natural health and has achieved a balance in her life that allows time for friends, her four cats, indulging her lifelong love of jazz and even the occasional motorcycle ride with her new fiancé, Dennis. It helps, she says, that her focus today is less on accomplishment than on leadership and the legacy she can leave behind.

“My reason for work, for getting on the board is about how do I make that meaningful difference across the most lives,” she says. “It’s about giving back to all the seniors in my life what they’ve given me and about keeping the sparkle in their eyes one day longer.”

Officially, Todd Andrews’ career in senior living began in 1993, when the newly minted public administration graduate was hired by what is now Sodexo. In fact, his training began as a high school student in in Vestal, N.Y., when he volunteered to live with his maternal grandmother, who had begun to experience mild cognitive and health issues.

“Admittedly, I liked the idea of being out of my parents’ house and independent,” Andrews says with a laugh. “What was truly important was that I could help my grandmother live as safe and enjoyable a life as possible.”

Although Andrews stayed close to home to continue assisting his family while attending college at nearby Binghamton University, his career with Sodexo has kept him on the move literally and figuratively. With his steadily increasing experience has come a series of new responsibilities and address changes. Andrews’ most recent relocation brought him to Richmond, Va., where he now oversees 105 Sodexo senior living partnerships in the Southeast and Midwest portion of the United States

Along the way, Andrews has helped Sodexo redefine the concept of senior living, with quality of life underscoring its approach to serving residents, regardless of their individual lifestyle and care needs.

Indeed, Andrews dislikes using the adjective “home-like” in characterizations of Sodexo communities.

“This is home—the place where you want to be, not something you’ve given up,” he explains. “It’s our job to provide that kind of experience.”

Andrews has stayed on the move in other ways. His passion for golf has taken him to many of the world’s most famous golf courses, while a love for drag racing has sent him barreling down quarter-mile tracks in just seconds. Andrews has owned and raced various types of cars in the Mid-Atlantic over the years, including dragsters that can achieve speeds of more than 200 mph.

But family still comes first for Andrews, who has temporarily shelved his racing interests to spend more time with his wife, Melissa Andrews, CEO of the senior advocacy group Leading Age Virginia, and their daughter, Eliza. Andrews also has a son, Jordan, 23, and a daughter, Taylor, 17, from a previous marriage.

Andrews welcomed the opportunity to join Pioneer Network’s Board of Directors, citing the synergy between the non-profit group’s groundbreaking efforts to promote cultural change in older adult services, and Sodexo’s commitment to providing top-quality senior living communities.

“It’s a natural fit,” he says. “The insights we share have immeasurable benefits to the people we serve.”

And while the landscape for serving older adults continues to evolve, Andrews often recalls the daily joys and challenges of helping his grandmother.

“She’s still my moral compass,” he says. “If there’s a decision to make or something we’re looking at, I’ll ask myself, ‘Would she be OK with this?’ I don’t think I could’ve asked for a better ‘mentor’ for a career so focused on helping people make the most of their lives.”

At an early age Jessica Luh Kim became fascinated by the similarities and differences between cultures. She grew up in a small-town in Ontario, Canada. It was a close-knit community where neighbors gathered on porches in the evenings, and kids played hopscotch on the sidewalk. But it was not ethnically diverse, and her family stood out.

Jessica was an only child raised by first-generation Chinese parents. Far from their home country, they often watched Asian dramas and celebrated key Chinese holidays along with the Canadian holidays they adopted in their new home.

“Growing up in Canada, we have our own unique culture,” she says.

Jessica says at times she was bullied for the color of her skin. That experience influenced her desire to work with people who are marginalized, discriminated against or not valued—as seniors often are. She spent many weekends hanging out at the local hospital where her father, Rooney Luh, worked. Most of his patients were seniors, and she felt accepted by them. By the time she entered McMaster University, she knew she wanted to study gerontology and psychology, a combined degree.

After college, Jessica worked for the Alzheimer Society, where she fell in love with working with older adults and people living with disabilities or chronic conditions.

While finishing her Master’s degree in Recreation and Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo, she married her husband, Peter Kim. At age 30, they had their first daughter, Abigail, then Eden two years later. She and Peter, a second-generation Korean-Canadian, affectionately refer to their children as “Chorean,” because they’re half Chinese, half Korean Canadians.

Growing up, both Jessica and Peter were taught to respect, value, and honor their elders. Jessica worries that older adults today are not as respected and valued in society. It’s no wonder that she is keen to address the culture of aging in her current job as director of the resident experience for Schlegel Villages, an Ontario, Canada-based group of long-term care and retirement communities.

She learned of the Pioneer Network through acquaintances from the Murray Alzheimer Research and Education Program at the University of Waterloo, where she worked during and after her graduate program.

Pioneer’s focus on changing the culture of aging in the 21st century dovetails with Jessica’s personal goals. “I want to create a world where people are caring and accepting and inclusive of all different peoples,” she says. “We all desire love. We all desire a sense of connection and a sense of belonging and that’s a world I would love to have a hand in creating.”

Thomas Gilmartin describes his life as “blessed,” built on enduring relationships developed throughout his professional career. “I’ve met the right people at exactly the right time,” Thomas said, “and have been able to build real relationships that have meaning.”

The combination of those relationships along with his work experience led him to his current position as Chief Financial Officer at National Health Care Associates, a long-term care company with approximately 40 facilities across the northeast United States.

Thomas comes from a blue color family of modest means but grew up in an environment that promoted humility, integrity and the value of a strong work ethic. “While we didn’t grow up with much,” Thomas said “we grew up in a very warm and supportive environment.”

Thomas admits to growing up with a “bit of a chip on my shoulder,” perhaps to compensate for the family’s limited means. He credits those financial hardships for the “hunger and drive that has allowed him to get to this point in life.”

Despite limited means, he was able to put himself through college while working full time. Ironically it was one of his first jobs while at college that influenced his health care career path. As he recalls, he was working for a hospital as a messenger — “in those days, they used an actual person to deliver claims and pick up checks” — and as a result he visited Blue Cross Blue Shield on a daily basis.

After graduating from Herbert H. Lehman College with a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Thomas attended law school for a year on scholarship but decided that law was not his calling. Thomas set off on a job search and as luck would have it, landed an opportunity working at Blue Cross in the reimbursement department and has been in the healthcare industry ever since.

Before joining National Health Care Associates, Thomas was the Chief Administrative officer at Jewish Home Lifecare.

Thomas and his wife Helen work hard to impart their work and life experiences to their four children. Primary among those messages is the value of honesty and education.

In fact, Thomas took the unusual step of waiting until later in life to finish his Masters in Business Administration from Norwich University. “I enjoyed the challenge of going back to school after quite some time, being one of the older students in the program,” he said. “I was able to tie my life experiences with the education and I found the experience to be personally fulfilling.”

Now Thomas is excited to apply his life experiences and education to helping the Pioneer Network deliver on its mission to transform the culture of aging in America. “I’m a big believer in the balance of life and giving back” Thomas said. “This is a tremendous opportunity to work with an exceptional organization that has a meaningful cause.”

In high school, Juliet Holt Klinger learned about dementia as a volunteer at a nursing home, back when people with behavioral issues often were tied to chairs. Later in college, she studied under some of the first experts in the emerging field of dementia care, and she began to understand why those people were tied to chairs, and how there could be better ways to treat them. She’d found her calling.

Though Juliet’s grandparents had all passed by the time she was 3, she grew up knowing what it meant to be a caregiver. Her mother was often debilitated with severe rheumatoid arthritis and she eventually passed at the age of 61, when Juliet was only 27.

Community was something Juliet’s parents ingrained in their three daughters. Juliet was the youngest, following Susan and Eva. Instead of living on the upscale side of Ames, Iowa, where both parents were professors at Iowa State University, they lived in a rambling historic home in the blue-collar end.

The girls, with their succession of dogs, guinea pigs inherited from academic research projects and five cousins nearby, all had idyllic childhoods. Summer vacations were spent trailer-camping out West where Jack Holt, a bacteriologist, and Bess-Gene, who specialized in early childhood education, taught reverence for the natural world. “My folks were pretty radical for the area, not so much for the time,” Juliet recalls. “I think my parents would have described themselves as beatniks.”

Undergraduate college took Juliet 10 years as she held down multiple jobs as a nursing assistant at the University of Iowa Hospital’s trauma center and as a social worker in nursing homes, including the first secure dementia unit in the state.

After graduating from the University of Iowa in 1992 with a bachelor’s in social work and a minor in women’s studies, and an aging studies certificate, Juliet moved with friends to Fort Collins, Colo. At the University of Northern Colorado, she enrolled in one of the country’s first gerontology Master’s programs.

Following graduate school, Juliet got a job in Chicago managing a multi-site division for Marriott Senior Living. After a couple years, Marriott sold that business to Sunrise, and Juliet decided she needed a break. She took a job running an assisted living memory care community on the south side of Chicago.

It was around then that Juliet met Christian Klinger. He was born in Ecuador and his family immigrated to Chicago when he was a baby. They hit it off immediately. “We had what is largely considered to be the best wedding ever in downtown Chicago with a really lovely boat reception on the lake,” Juliet says with a laugh. “Just had a great life ever since.”

The two have been married more than 11 years and adopted a Shi Tzu/Poodle/Maltese mix, Ruby. Plenty of nieces on both sides and one nephew—Christian has two brothers—keep them surrounded by family.

After a year of working as an executive director on the south side, Juliet was offered a job leading a memory care division at Alterra Senior Living. Several mergers and acquisitions later, she runs the dementia division of more than 500 communities for Brookdale Senior Living, the country’s largest provider of senior care. There, she oversees a rich universe of engagement, focusing on person-centered care. “We’ve been able to create much more home-like settings in assisted living,” Juliet notes. “We’ve come a long way.”

Growing up in Chicago Tim was lucky to know his maternal grandparents, often following the snowbirds from Chicago to the warmer climates of Orlando. They were a constant in his life and a part of every birthday, holiday, and celebration.

Both grandparents had a series of strokes and lived their last years in assisted living facilities, supported by a network of formal and informal caregivers. It was during this time that Tim first became aware of the intensity of the caregiving role, as well as the impact of well-trained and compassionate care providers on a loved one’s well being.

After graduating high school Tim pursued undergraduate and graduate degrees in Philosophy with an emphasis on feminist and queer theory. He has long considered himself an LGBT activist but had not spent much time thinking about aging until he began research for his dissertation on bullying and anti-LGBT bias. That research led him to SAGE and SAGE’s LGBT aging cultural competency training work, now known as SAGECare. After starting as a volunteer, he was eventually hired on as the Manager of Education and Learning and has been with the organization ever since.

Over the years Tim’s advocacy interest has expanded beyond LGBT aging and he is passionate about elder justice, in particular for people with dementia. Tim’s main focus is on training and staff education. He believes that people who work with older adults have a caring disposition, and it’s his job as an advocate to give them the skills and information that they need to create more equitable and welcoming services. Over the years Tim has attended Pioneer Network conferences and shares their vision for the future of services and supports for older adults and their caregivers. He is honored to continue his work in the culture change movement as a member of the Pioneer Network board of directors.

Tim’s grandparents died before he came out and began working in advocacy. When he asked his mother what they might have thought of his identity, his partner, and career she said, “Well. Hard to say for sure, but remember when you were five years old and Grandma made you a skirt from fabric scraps so that you could spin around like Maria in the opening of Sound of Music? Something tells me they would have been on board.”

Cheryl likes to say that she “got into geriatric care by chance and stayed by choice.” She began her more than 30-year career in a nursing home in 1981 in Sheboygan, WI, a recently minted licensed practical nurse. She had hoped to land a hospital job, but the nursing home was the only gig available.

Listening to her patients tell stories about their pasts, she realized that caring for the elderly was work that “fed her heart and soul.” Elders, she believes, have given us so much and ask for so little; she feels that the very least we can do is provide them with exceptional service. Which is why she’s worked hard to promote her belief that elders deserve reverence, support, and honor.

Born and raised in Sheboygan, Wis., Cheryl was the youngest of five children. Her father, a factory worker, and her mother, a homemaker, were so proud of her when she became the first in the family to complete college. She earned her first degree as a licensed practical nurse from Lakeshore Technical College in Cleveland, WI in 1980. This degree, like the many to follow, was paid through student loans.

Cheryl jokes that her loans will not be paid off until ten years after her death: Her relentless thirst for knowledge led to a Doctoral degree in Education as well as Bachelor’s degrees in Business and Nursing and Master’s degrees in Health Care Administration and Nursing. These degrees from Cardinal Stritch University, University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), and Walden University, added 14 years of higher education and ten letters —EdD, MS, RN, CNE—to her name.

Over three decades, she’s managed many nursing homes and assisted living homes.

Along the way she’s built a family with her husband, Bob Kruschke, whom she married in 1980. Together they have three children, Michelle, Joe, and Jeff. Jeff, who died when he was four years old, has been “the family angel,” she says. They raised their family in Sheboygan, where they enjoy the outdoors, especially fishing, together.

As a well-known expert on gerontology, Cheryl’s nation-wide presentations have brought to a wide audience issues related to eldercare, particularly financial problems that force care facilities to make bad choices. Her pet peeves include the firing of hands-on caregivers to pay for less beneficial “bells and whistles,” such as fancy furniture, art work, and huge administrative salaries, as well as nursing homes that ramp up quality and care only when surveyors are in the building.

Cheryl’s love of learning feeds her love of teaching. In 2008, she moved from Wisconsin, where she worked in nursing homes, to Denver, Colo., where she was hired by the Loretto Heights School of Nursing, Regis University. As an associate professor, she teaches on-line classes to hundreds of nursing students. In 2018, she published a textbook focused on leadership skills for LPNs who work with the aging population.

In recent years, Cheryl has brought her nursing and caregiving experience home to help her husband, who has late-stage Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Cheryl and Bob enjoy reminiscing about their long and happy lives.

Early in her career, Marguerite McLaughlin worked as a recreational therapist at St. Elizabeth Home in Providence, R.I. a nursing home for women, where her favorite coworker was a Husky with light brown hair and blue eyes named Annie.

She first met Annie during an intergenerational project she organized with teachers from a local day care. Each senior was paired with a child and assigned a sled team to follow remotely from the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. A local sled dog association came to visit, bringing Husky puppies from its kennel.

“They actually hooked the Huskies up to the ladies’ wheelchairs, and the kids would sit in their laps and go for a ride!” she recalls.

The experience led her to adopt Annie, who worked with her in the nursing home for more than a decade, bringing therapeutic and sometimes transformative care to the residents there. It also solidified her decision to devote her life to culture change in long-term care.

Marguerite was born in Providence, R.I., to Charles, a lawyer, and Marguerite, a nurse. She is third eldest of five children. She recalls fond memories at the beach with her family, packing enough food to stay until evening and admire the sunset. Her mom would fire up their Coleman stove, make sloppy joes and they would eat nestled in their sweatshirts under the moon.

Her parents were married for almost 60 years. Charles died in 2011. Her mother, now 92, volunteers at a food bank on Saturdays and still drives. She says she is her hero. Both Marguerites still live in Providence today.

She studied recreational therapy at Springfield College in Massachusetts and got her Master’s degree in holistic therapy at Salve Regina University. She later moved on to Medicare’s Quality Improvement Organization for Rhode Island and got involved with a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pilot study to help other QIO’s across the nation learn culture change and apply it.

This led her to the American Healthcare Association in Washington, D.C., telecommuting from Rhode Island, where she continued to create educational tools and resources for nursing homes to implement the person-centered approach to elder care that she learned at St. Elizabeth.

“I loved the sense of community I experienced working in a nursing home,” Marguerite says.

She was so influenced by the women she worked with there that she converted to the Episcopal faith in 1992, a guiding light in her life that has increased in importance throughout the years. The Episcopal Church founded St. Elizabeth, which now provides comprehensive care services including housing and home care for all seniors and people with physical disabilities throughout Rhode Island.

Marguerite and her spouse have four adult children and three grandchildren. She credits their family ritual of weekly Sunday dinners for their closeness. They also cherish time together on their back porch, enjoying a beautiful view, a good meal and a glass of wine.

“In culture change, we teach it’s all about the relationship,” she says. “I think what’s really remarkable about our house is that it’s really a very incredible relationship of people caring and being respectful and loving each other.”

As the child of a long-term care public policy expert (and former member of the Pioneer Network board of directors), Kenyon Redfoot was raised to believe in person-centered care and aging with dignity as core values.

“Growing up, our dinner table conversations frequently touched on subjects from innovation in nursing home delivery models to advancements in the treatment of dementia,” Kenyon recalls. “At the time, I probably would have preferred baseball or Indiana Jones, but you never know what’s going to stick with you over the years.”

After retiring from baseball following a decorated (in his opinion) Little League career and realizing that Raiders of the Lost Ark was not reflective of the day-to-day life of an archaeologist, Kenyon’s career aspirations turned toward the practice of law. In 2017, Kenyon graduated from The George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. and returned to the Rocky Mountain region where he spent his youth to begin a corporate practice at the Denver office of Holland & Hart LLP. Kenyon served as outside pro bono counsel to Pioneer Network for two years before joining the organization’s board of directors in 2019.

“I like to think I don’t take myself too seriously,” says Kenyon, “but I do take seriously the responsibility that comes with having a platform to do good and, in some small way, influence positive social change. Given my life-long exposure to aging issues – and personal experience when my mother became a caregiver for her parents in their final years with dementia – I can’t think of a more meaningful way to direct my efforts than to support an organization that addresses one of the most important questions we face as humans: What do we want and how do we want to be treated at the end of our lives?”

Outside of his legal practice and board service with Pioneer Network, Kenyon is an avid Scrabble player and enjoys hiking, snowboarding and otherwise playing in the outdoors in the beautiful state of Colorado.

Like so many others, Wayne Langley came to the field of aging services more or less by accident. While working with health care organizations early in his career, he became the corporate liaison with a senior living provider based in Kansas. Over the coming months, he realized the opportunities for growth within the emerging field of aging services. There was much to learn early on, and the learning continues to this day. For three decades, Wayne has surfaced solutions that deliver business results and sustain nonprofit missions around the world.

Although a native of Alabama, Wayne has resided in three different time zones. His travels for work and pleasure have allowed visits to every state and four continents, including a three-week journey around the world. He is blessed to have connected with so many amazing people from diverse cultures, with disparate world views.

Wayne worked full time throughout much of his time at college, except during football season when he was anchoring the offensive line for his alma mater, Mid-America Nazarene University in Olathe, KS. His employer’s CEO at the time (let’s call him “Tom”) — saw something in Wayne’s leadership abilities, so Wayne quickly moved into a warehouse manager role. Tom mentored Wayne during his entire university experience, with a focus on strong personal discipline and doing the right things for the right reasons. It was a terrific learning platform for the roles yet to come throughout Wayne’s career.

Taking on fresh challenges has always been a driver of change for Wayne. One of the more inspiring phrases one can say to him is, “It can’t be done.” This is especially true when it comes to taking on an underperforming team or building a team from scratch. Helping others realize their personal goals while contributing to overarching organizational success continues to motivate him. Communicating a clearly articulated purpose, embracing well-conceived plans for execution, leaning on strong cultures of accountability and celebrating success have become markers in his road map for driving excellence.

Members of Pioneer Network’s team were introduced to Wayne through a mutual friend at Providence Health & Services of Washington State. They invited him to attend an annual conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, to check out the work and the people committed to making a difference in the senior living space. Wayne was attracted to the members’ vision and even more inspired by their passion for advancing Pioneer’s commitment to doing things differently.

Wayne and his wife, Kelly, reside in Chicago, Illinois, where they enjoy cultural experiences, amazing dining venues, and Lake Michigan. Five children and eight grandchildren across the country occupy much of their discretionary time and frequent flyer miles. Wayne and Kelly love to travel, hang out with friends, and volunteer.