Shaping Dementia Environments Perkins Eastman

Today’s bonus episode wraps up Season 1 of Shaping Dementia environments! We have a discussion with Susan Ryan about what she’s learned during the last year both from advising senior living organizations all around the world through the Green House Project, as well as talking to experts in the field of aging through her podcast Elevate Eldercare. She shares with us some of the core tenets of great environments for everyone, regardless of cognitive ability.
Susan Ryan is Senior Director at the Green House Project.  Susan has spent over 25 years working with elders as a nurse and change agent. She has worked in a variety of eldercare settings and helped to lead her previous organization’s transformation to culture change by assessing industry innovation and developing strategic and educational protocols.  Her podcast, Elevate Eldercare, airs each Wednesday and explores the opportunities and challenges to actualizing a vision for dignified eldercare through the lens of the Green House model.
 
Continue the conversation in our LinkedIn group Shaping Dementia Environments:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9044567/
Learn more about Perkins Eastman insights:
https://www.perkinseastman.com/white-papers/

Today’s bonus episode continues the conversation Max had with Sean Kelly of Kendal. Similar to some of our other guests in this week’s episode, Max asks the following question of Sean: Given the progress, we’ve seen in caring for people living with dementia in the last thirty years, do you think there’s anything we’ll regret about how we care for people living with dementia today looking back thirty years from now?
Sean Kelly, President & CEO, joined Kendal in 2008 and took on his current role in 2016. Prior to 2016, while at Kendal, Sean was responsible for fostering a culture of continuous improvement through leading and managing new opportunities for growth and evolution for Kendal. Sean came to Kendal after 10+ years working with development, finance, marketing and operations consultant to senior housing and service providers throughout the United States.
 
Continue the conversation in our LinkedIn group Shaping Dementia Environments:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9044567/
Learn more about Perkins Eastman insights:
https://www.perkinseastman.com/white-papers/

We’ve chosen to bookend our first season of Shaping Dementia Environments with the topic of ‘Risk Attitude’, because it was so fundamental to every conversation we had this season. Something we alluded to in Part 1, and that appears several times in today’s episode, is the concept ‘surplus safety’ – which takes the approach of applying the most restrictive condition to everyone, as opposed to creating individualized interventions that are tailored to the individual. How do we perceive risk for older adults living with dementia? How can operators push the boundaries to prioritize resident choice and quality of life, rather than putting an over-emphasis on safety above all else?
First, we talk to three members of the leadership team of Kendal: Sean Kelly, Marvell Adams, and Steve Bailey.
Sean Kelly, President & CEO, joined Kendal in 2008 and took on his current role in 2016. Prior to 2016, while at Kendal, Sean was responsible for fostering a culture of continuous improvement through leading and managing new opportunities for growth and evolution for Kendal. Sean came to Kendal after 10+ years working with development, finance, marketing and operations consultant to senior housing and service providers throughout the United States.
Marvell Adams Jr., COO, served as Executive Director/CEO of Kendal’s metro Washington, D.C.-area affiliate, Collington, for seven years, before being named The Kendal Corporation’s Chief Operating Officer in October 2018. Marvell came to Collington from Rochester, New York, where he was COO/Administrator at The Highlands at Pittsford, a continuing care retirement community affiliated with the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Steve Bailey, SVP of New Business and Development, joined Kendal’s corporate staff in 2012 as Project Director and has directed major expansion and repositioning projects for several Kendal communities, including Kendal on Hudson and Kendal at Ithaca. He also has served as a key resource for planning and developing new Kendal communities, including development plans for Kendal at Sonoma in northern California in partnership with the San Francisco Zen Center. Steve’s experience includes more than 30 years in real estate development and planning.
Next, we speak with Tammy Marshall. Tammy is president & CEO of Biophilia Pharma, where she focuses on the healing power between nature and humans. Previously, she served as the first woman Chief Experience Officer in the country for ageing services, the first woman to sit on Thrive Senior Living’s vision team, and the first VP of Strategic Planning for one of New York’s largest long-term care systems. She previously served as chief experience officer at a New York City-based senior care nonprofit called the New Jewish Home, where she led an effort in boosting person-centered care. Marshall keynotes around the globe on the topics of ageism, woman in leadership, integrative health and civil rights for those living with changing cognitive abilities, sometimes known as Alzheimer’s and Dementia. She is known for her published work on leadership, dementia care, designing environments for older adults and strategic planning.
Finally, we talk to Kirsten Jacobs, who leads dementia and wellness education strategy at LeadingAge, including enhancing existing external/internal relationships and identifying areas of potential growth. She develops wellness, dementia and related content for conferences and other education efforts, including distance learning. She provides thought leadership around wellness and dementia to various audiences, including speaking/presenting at conferences and delivering technical assistance to members.
 
Continue the conversation in our LinkedIn group Shaping Dementia Environments:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9044567/
Learn more about Perkins Eastman insights:
https://www.perkinseastman.com/white-papers/

Today’s bonus episode continues the conversation Jen had with Jude Rabig of Rabig Consulting. She explains the lengths that they went to when designing and building the first Greenhouses to make sure that they mirrored the houses and homes the residents would be coming from in the specific context of Tupelo, Mississippi. She gives some strategies anyone can use to make sure that their care environment reflects the place it finds itself in, and the residents who find themselves in it.
Jude Rabig is a nationally recognized leader, speaker, and change agent who served as the first Executive Director of the National Green House Project. She assisted in shaping the model of care and leading the implementation of the first Green Houses in Tupelo, Mississippi. Through her company Rabig Consulting, she provides customized change consultations to help communities develop innovative strategies for change in long-term care.  She has worked with scores of organizations nationally and in Canada to develop small house communities.  In addition to providing Small House consulting nationally, she also founded and leads Lifespace Senior Services based in Schenectady, NY to provide home and community-based clients with support for their holistic well-being with an emphasis on thriving despite limitations or frailty. She has served in many roles including Director of the Office for Aging and Continuing Care in Oneida County New York and Professor of Gerontology at Utica College. In each of these positions, she has worked tirelessly, exhibiting a commitment to fighting ageism, and championing programs and practices that support autonomy, dignity and enhanced quality of life for older adults. She is a former Atlantic Philanthropies, Hartford Foundation Practice Change Fellow, and a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Innovation Adviser. She holds a Ph.D. in gerontology and a business certificate from Stanford School of Business.
 
Continue the conversation in our LinkedIn group Shaping Dementia Environments:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9044567/
Learn more about Perkins Eastman insights:
https://www.perkinseastman.com/white-papers/

In institutional environments, there is a clear distinction between spaces that are ‘front of house’ and spaces that are ‘back of house’. But as we move away from institutional approaches, this distinction starts to blur very quickly. Join Jennifer and Max as we talk to 3 great guests – Jude Rabig, Carrie Chiusano, and Damian Utton about their experiences educating leadership, frontline staff, family, and communities about how operation and design can make their communities feel more like home.
Our first interview is with Jude Rabig, a nationally recognized leader, speaker, and change agent who served as the first Executive Director of the National Green House Project. She assisted in shaping the model of care and leading the implementation of the first Green Houses in Tupelo, Mississippi. Through her company RabigConsulting, she provides customized change consultations to help communities develop innovative strategies for change in long-term care.  She has worked with scores of organizations nationally and in Canada to develop small house communities.  In addition to providing Small House consulting nationally, she also founded and leads Lifespace Senior Services based in Schenectady, NY to provide home and community-based clients with support for their holistic well-being with an emphasis on thriving despite limitations or frailty. She has served in many roles including Director of the Office for Aging and Continuing Care in Oneida County New York and Professor of Gerontology at Utica College. In each of these positions, she has worked tirelessly, exhibiting a commitment to fighting ageism, and championing programs and practices that support autonomy, dignity and enhanced quality of life for older adults. She is a former Atlantic Philanthropies, Hartford Foundation Practice Change Fellow, and a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Innovation Adviser. She holds a Ph.D. in gerontology and a business certificate from Stanford School of Business.
Then, we speak with Carrie Chiusano. She has 36 years of long-term care experience with Presbyterian SeniorCare Network, many of which were spent helping to shape and implement the Woodside Place philosophy of specialty care for persons living with Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementias. Prior to being appointed Executive Director for the Presbyterian SeniorCare Network Dementia Care Center of Excellence in January 2016, Carrie served for five years as the Administrator for Woodside Place of Oakmont, which opened in 1991 and was one of the nation’s first dementia-specific residential community specifically designed to meet the holistic needs of older adults living with Alzheimer’s and related dementias. In her leadership of the dementia Center of Excellence, Carrie is responsible for the integration of dementia care services across the various settings that comprise the Network as well as the family caregivers coping with the disease. In addition to her service on numerous, industry association boards, Carrie has become a certified trainer for the National Council of Certified Dementia Practitioners in dementia care.
Our last conversation is with Damian Utton, who has been with Pozzoni Architecture since 1997 and is now a Director, bringing his wealth of experience in design for older people to his coordination and leadership of research and development at the firm. In the late 2000’s, he spent a sabbatical touring and researching more than 100 dementia environments around the world, and the findings became his book: ‘Designing Homes for People with Dementia’. He subsequently has authored and co-authored books on designing for older people and people with dementia and writes frequently for the care press.
 
Continue the conversation in our LinkedIn group Shaping Dementia Environments:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9044567/
Learn more about Perkins Eastman insights:
https://www.perkinseastman.com/white-papers/

Today’s bonus episode continues the conversation Max had with Len Fishman from the Gerontology Institute at UMass Boston.  In this clip, Len speaks to concepts of aging in community and the reality approaching the baby boomer generation in the United States.
Len Fishman is a nationally recognized leader in the field of aging policy. He directs the Gerontology Institute at UMass Boston’s John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies. For 12 years he served as CEO of Hebrew SeniorLife, New England’s largest nonprofit provider of senior housing and health care. Prior to joining Hebrew SeniorLife, Fishman was president and CEO of LeadingAge, a coalition of 6,000 non-profit aging services organizations, in Washington, D.C. He served as commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services under Governor Christine Todd Whitman. Before that, he was a health care lawyer in NJ and PA.
 
Continue the conversation in our LinkedIn group Shaping Dementia Environments:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9044567/
Learn more about Perkins Eastman insights:
https://www.perkinseastman.com/white-papers/