2020 Conference Speakers
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Senator Roy C. Afflerbach, Ret. is founder and President of The Afflerbach Group, LLC. He personally selects the clients, associates, and strategic partners with whom the firm works. In addition to directing the overall activities of the Group, he assists individual client-partners with strategic planning and is the Group’s principal lobbyist.
Senator Afflerbach’s experience and access to government circles span nearly forty-eight years, during which he has earned more than fifty public service awards. After serving in the United States Air Force, he served as senior staff in the Pennsylvania Senate, a two-term Member of the State House of Representatives, a three-term State Senator, and Mayor of the City of Allentown, the third-largest city in Pennsylvania. He currently serves as a Senior Public Policy Advisor on the NADSA board.
Roy will be providing attendees with an update on NADSA advocacy and lead a discussion around the current state and national trends.
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It’s a good thing Paul didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps as a world-class actor because he’s much better at creating employee experience strategies for clients. Having been in the benefits industry for 14 years, Paul knows what he’s talking about when it comes to business needs. He’s known for being a connector and getting his clients to the best outcomes in the market.
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As Senior Vice President & Advisor, Paul works to create and carry the FirstPerson vision. He leads our sales and advisory team toward great strategies and outcomes, while still focusing on developing quality partnerships with clients. In fact, Paul knows his clients as well as he knows his wine and wine history (and that says a lot for this sommelier).
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Paul is a graduate of Ball State University, and holds the Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS) designation from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School/International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plan (IFEBP) as part of the IFEBP’s Certified Employee Benefit Specialist program. In the community, Paul serves on the board for Outreach and is the President of the Central Indiana ISCEBS. He also serves as an assistant coach for the Carmel FC soccer program
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Christi Clark is the Programming Consultant for Harpeth Consultant Advisory Group. Christi has served in many different capacities in the long-term care industry: executive and regional level roles in both operations and sales and marketing.
Christi shifted her focus towards working with those living with a diagnosis of memory impairment and their caregivers. Christi worked to develop community partnerships, develop multi-stage dementia programming, engagement models, and early-stage MCI programs for individuals and their care partners. Christi has also developed sales and marketing plans for organizations looking to increase their referral sources and hone in on their marketing strategies. With the ever-changing landscape of home and community-based care models, and dementia care, Christi works to stay ahead of the curve, so she can work with individuals and organizations on innovative and person-centered model development and implementation.
Christi will be leading a vibrant Q&A session focused on what types of activities to plan and do that best maintain social distancing guidelines.
Kathleen Kelly, MPA, is Executive Director of Family Caregiver Alliance, a national nonprofit organization that provides direct caregiver support services, public policy development, research, and public awareness regarding family caregivers. As director, she oversees programs of the Bay Area Caregiver Resource Center (providing direct services to families in the San Francisco Bay Area), California policy collaborations, and the National Center on Caregiving. During her tenure, the organization has grown from a grassroots program to a national organization that provides leadership on supporting family caregivers with best-practice interventions, public policy, state system development, and leading-edge research.
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Ms. Kelly represents the agency on a variety of national coalitions and partnerships that are working towards coordinated care with the inclusion of family caregivers as part of the care team, better training for health and social service professionals, and increasing training and support for family caregivers. Recently she was named a 2016 Influencer in Aging by the PBS-affiliated media service Next Avenue, and last winter she co-edited with Jennifer Wolff, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the American Society on Aging’s issue of Generations on Family Caregiving.
In her current project portfolio, Ms. Kelly heads a team to develop projects under the Caregiving 2.0: Next Generation Service Delivery initiative that includes: the online caregiver portal CareNav containing caregiver assessments for low and high-intensity interventions; a record system for tracking service use; and an online learning community for scaling training and direct interventions for caregivers. CareNav is intended for use within healthcare and social service systems. In addition, she recently oversaw a pilot project of the Atlas of Caregiving, that uses ethnographic research and wearable technologies to better understand the lived experience of daily caregiving.
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Nichole Rose-Freeman
Dr. Nichole Rose-Freeman is a clinical psychologist in the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinical Team and Trauma Recovery Services at the Roudebush VAMC. Before beginning this position, she was a PTSD/SUD specialist at Battle Creek VAMC working both in a residential PTSD program and an outpatient PTSD Clinical Team. She has worked with a wide variety of trauma experiences, including combat, Military Sexual Trauma, and childhood trauma, in both group and individual therapy formats. She is a VA certified provider in Prolonged Exposure Therapy, Cognitive Processing Therapy, and Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation.
Dr. Rose-Freeman will conduct a session of sharing focused on how to best care for the mental health of veterans. She will draw on her personal experiences working with veterans throughout her career including her current role at the Roudebush VAMC and guide a discussion on best practices.
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Todd Wagoner is a master’s level clinical social worker with over 25 years of healthcare experience in hospital discharge planning and, most recently, serving as the geriatric social worker for the Touchpoint Healthy Aging Transition Services. Todd's primary responsibilities are to facilitate neurocognitive psychological testing for individuals with cognitive impairments, provide clinical counseling to address depression and anxiety in older adults, and address caregiver needs through individual and group counseling.
Todd also serves as board president for the Gayle Wells Foundation for Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease based out of Houston, TX. He speaks regularly to both formal and informal groups on subjects such as dementia, caregiver stress, and aging as it relates to mood disorders while serving on Taylor University’s Department of Social Work Community Advisory Board.
We look forward to Todd's session on Caregiver Self-Care and how to best ensure that caregivers are empowered to care for their own health and well-being along with their loved ones.
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