Invest In Your Leadership And The Future of Aging

How do we build better organizations and transform our field? It starts with leadership. Now more than ever, aging services needs forward-thinking leaders to address the gaps in our field illuminated by the pandemic and better meet the needs of society’s most vulnerable.?We need our best and brightest to step up.?A proven path for stronger leadership is the?Larry Minnix Leadership Academy.?

The Academy’s year-long curriculum?gives new, aspiring, and seasoned leaders the foundation to?build self-confidence and lead through reflective practice. Program participants reap benefits from the very first gathering gaining tools, ideas and learnings they can leverage to strengthen their own leadership capacity and make their organizations more adaptive and innovative.??

This year we will visit three transformative LeadingAge members:??Shell Point and?Cypress Cove in Fort Myers, FL, and Trinity Landing, part of Lutheran Services Carolinas, in Wilmington, NC.??Our design and coaching team consists of Judy Brown, Wendy Green, and BreAna Moss as facilitators and staff, and we are joined by Jeffrey Farber (New Jewish Home), Claire Guerette (St. Margaret’s House), Marvell Adams (Kendal Corporation) and Michael Griffin (Pennswood Village)?who will serve as our coaches and guides.?In addition to tapping their immense and seasoned wisdom, we will host intimate gatherings with dozens of leaders from across the country and the continuum of service when we meet at LeadingAge conferences.?The complete schedule is located?here.?

The Academy has become a tradition in LeadingAge leadership.?With a 15-year track record, the program has propelled its nearly 600 alumni to serve on state and national boards, present at conferences across the country, step into high-profile leadership roles, and create innovative ways to better address the needs of an aging society.

What’s our secret sauce??In addition to providing reflective space and leveraging a huge range of leadership tools and resources, we embrace the power of diversity and build a peer network to lead through and beyond crisis.?Indeed, diversity, in its many forms, fuels leadership development and propels personal growth by expanding our collective knowledge.?Our Academy curriculum?emphasizes self-exploration and relationship-building to enable participants to embrace diversity of thought, move beyond pre-conceived assumptions and view their own experiences and those of others as learning opportunities.?Our?commitment to?diversity and broadened perspectives is essential to a greater understanding and awareness and paves the way to a more equitable and inclusive future.?

What Leadership Academy Alums talk about more than anything else is the relationships?they formed with leaders from a variety of settings and disciplines, across the country, and how they leverage those relationships for knowledge, support, inspiration and friendship.?Imagine the power of that network of support through the past 18 months, and what that will mean as we build a better future for our field.?Who wouldn’t want to be part of that?

Those of us who have touched this program in one way or another are immensely proud of the difference it has made for the participating Fellows and the field at large, and the difference we know it will continue to make over the decades to come.?What began as an ambitious effort to strengthen the leadership capacity of aging services professionals has grown into a diverse alumni group of LeadingAge members that are ready to tackle, head-on, the ways in which our field must evolve in order to continue our service to those who need us most.?

We are at a pivotal point in aging services.?Emerging from a difficult couple of years,?we need the best and brightest, at all levels, to step up and lead us into a better future.?We need you.?We hope the Leadership Academy is part of your plan.?Apply now, or recommend the program to a colleague.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT

LeadingAge offers financial support (up to $5,800 to cover program fee) to organizations with limited financial resources. Interested individuals will be asked to provide a statement of need as part of their application.