The Experts

Helen Adeosun

Helen Adeosun is CEO and Founder of CareAcademy, a care enablement platform providing high-quality, state-approved training for home care and home health organizations. CareAcademy has skilled over 700K caregivers and works with 2,500 employers. She was named to Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list in 2020, one of Ten Outstanding Young Leaders by the Boston Chamber of Commerce in 2021, and a winner of EY’s Entrepreneur Of The Year New England Award and one of the Boston Globe’s inaugural Tech Power Players 50 in 2022. Adeosun serves on the board of the Caregiver Action Network and is a frequent industry speaker, a fierce champion of home care, and an advocate for the direct care worker. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame and obtained an EdM from Harvard University

Brynn Bowman

As Chief Executive Officer of the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC), Brynn Bowman presides over the organizational and content strategy that serves more than 1,700 CAPC member health care organizations, including over 70,000 clinicians and administrators. Bowman is a nationally recognized leader in scaling practice and culture change in health care delivery for people with serious illness. An expert in palliative care education, she specializes in health care leadership; palliative care business and financing; palliative care program design; palliative care education for nonpalliative care specialists; and palliative care delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work has been instrumental in the development of clinician engagement and education strategies to equip the U.S. health care workforce with the skills needed to care for patients with serious illness, and their families.

Corinne Eldridge

Corinne Eldridge is a recognized expert in caregiving and long-term care workforce issues. As President and CEO of the Center for Caregiver Advancement (CCA), she has led the organization in building the workforce that California needs and advancing the lives of caregivers and the people they serve. CCA has trained nearly 35,000 in-home caregivers and nursing home workers since it was founded in 2020. Corinne also led the launch of the Caregiver Resiliency Teams Project, the first of its kind in the nation to train caregivers on how to prepare for, respond to, and recover from climate-related emergencies. She has co-authored articles with UC San Francisco and UCLA researchers on the impact of caregiver training that were published in peer-reviewed journals Gerontology & Geriatrics Education and Journal of Applied Gerontology.

Robert Espinoza (Host)

Robert Espinoza is a national expert in workforce, aging, and caregiving issues. For more than 25 years, he has spearheaded high-profile advocacy campaigns and written seminal reports on the workforce, aging and long-term care, LGBTQ+ rights, and more. Robert is currently the Chief Executive Officer at National Skills Coalition, which fights for state and federal policies that promote inclusive, high-quality skills training so that workers across industries access a better life and local businesses see sustained growth. Prior to the Coalition, he served as the Executive Vice President of Policy at PHI, where he oversaw its acclaimed think tank on the direct care workforce for nearly a decade. In addition, Robert is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and sits on the board of directors for the National Academy of Social Insurance, the FrameWorks Institute, and the American Society on Aging, where he serves as Board Chair. In 2020, Robert was selected for the inaugural CARE100 list, recognizing him as one of the most forward-thinking individuals reshaping the landscape of caregiving in America, and in 2021, he testified before Congress on the profound need to transform direct care jobs.

Howard Gleckman

Howard Gleckman is a Senior Fellow at The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., where he is affiliated with the Tax Policy Center and the Program on Retirement Policy. He is the author of Caring for Our Parents (St. Martin’s Press) and writes a regular column on aging issues for Forbes.com. Mr. Gleckman was a member of the steering committee of the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution project “Reimagining Care for Older Adults” (2020-2021). He served on the National Academy of Social Insurance Study Panel on Long-Term Services and Supports (2018-2019) and was a convener of the Long-Term Care Financing Collaborative (2012-2016). He was 2006-2007 Media Fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation and a 2006-2008 Visiting Fellow at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. In 2016, he was a named one of the nation’s top 50 Influencers in Aging by Next Avenue.

David C. Grabowski, Ph.D.

David C. Grabowski, Ph.D. is a professor of health care policy in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed research articles with a particular focus on long-term care. He has testified in front of Congress five times on issues related to the care of older adults. Dr. Grabowski is a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. He has also served on several Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) technical expert panels, including the CMS Coronavirus Commission on Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes in 2020. He also recently was a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes.

Josephine Kalipeni

Josephine Kalipeni has been leading in economic, racial, and gender justice policy and advocacy for more than 20 years. She is the Executive Director of Family Values at Work (FV@W). Born in Malawi and raised in the Midwest by immigrant parents as the oldest of six children, Josie has personally navigated immigration, a bicultural identity, caregiving, and racism in Africa and North America. She initially worked in social work, where she witnessed systemic issues that drove her into progressive advocacy, particularly on issues of Medicaid, elder care, and caregiving. Josie is helping rethink traditional systems of work and leadership and ensure everyone has access to paid time to care.

Julie Kashen

Julie Kashen is a senior fellow and director for women’s economic justice at The Century Foundation, and a national go-to expert for policy makers and media on care policy. Kashen has more than two decades of experience forwarding care-related issues in federal and state government and through the nonprofit sector, including helping to draft and build momentum for national legislation. As a labor policy advisor to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), she helped draft and build momentum for the first paid sick days bill in Congress, the Healthy Families Act. As policy director of the three-year Make It Work campaign, she drafted a visionary child care proposal, whose principles were incorporated into the Child Care for Working Families Act. And as a senior advisor to the National Domestic Workers Alliance, she supported domestic workers to create and introduce the first ever national Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. In addition, as deputy director of policy for Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ), she helped New Jersey become the second state in the nation to adopt paid family and medical leave. Kashen is also a consultant with the CARE Fund. She lives in Maryland with her husband and son.

Joseph Macbeth

Joseph M. Macbeth is the Chief Executive Officer and President of the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals (NADSP) and has worked in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities for 41 years - beginning as a direct support professional. Macbeth is recognized as an international leader in the advocacy & movement to recognize direct support as a profession and for the past decade, has been a highly sought-after contributor on the workforce challenges that affects the intellectual and developmental disability service system. Earlier this year, Macbeth was re-appointed by President Joe Biden to the President's Committee for Intellectual Disabilities (PCPID) for a second two-year term where he co-chairs the sub-committee for workforce shortages.

Ai-jen Poo

Ai-jen Poo is an award-winning organizer, author, and a leading voice in the women’s movement. She is the President of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Executive Director of Caring Across Generations, Senior Advisor to Care in Action, Co-Founder of SuperMajority, and a Trustee of the Ford Foundation. Ai-jen is a nationally recognized expert on caregiving, the future of work, and what’s at stake for women of color. She is the author of the celebrated book, The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America. Follow her at @aijenpoo.

Kevin Prindiville

Kevin Prindiville is Justice in Aging’s Executive Director. He is a nationally recognized expert on Medicare and Medicaid policy and has served as counsel in several class action lawsuits protecting low-income senior’s access to public benefits—including health care, long-term services and supports and economic security programs. Kevin has a long history of developing partnerships and directing strategic advocacy efforts. The author of numerous articles, reports and briefs, he frequently testifies before legislators, presents at national conferences and works closely with both federal and state regulatory agencies. He also is quoted often in national and California media. Kevin recently served on Governor Newsom's Master Plan for Aging Stakeholder Advisory Committee. Under Kevin's leadership, Justice in Aging has tripled in size and has emerged as a leader on advancing equity in the aging community. Prior to joining Justice in Aging, Prindiville worked as a staff attorney at the Pennsylvania Health Law Project in Philadelphia, where he represented low-income individuals having trouble obtaining health care. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the University of California, San Diego. He is admitted to the Bar in California.

Jason Resendez

Jason Resendez is the President and CEO of the National Alliance for Caregiving, where he leads research, policy, and innovation initiatives to build health, wealth, and equity for America’s 53 million family caregivers. He is a nationally recognized expert on caregiving, healthy aging, and the science of inclusion in research. In 2023, Jason was named one of the most consequential leaders in health, science, and medicine by STAT News. Prior to joining NAC, Jason was the founding executive director of the UsAgainstAlzheimer’s Center for Brain Health Equity where he pioneered the concept of Brain Health Equity through peer-reviewed research, public health partnerships, and public policy. In 2020, Jason was named one of America’s top influencers in aging by PBS’s Next Avenue alongside Michael J. Fox and Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. He has been quoted by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, STAT News, Time, Newsweek, and Univision on caregiving and health equity. Jason is from South Texas and graduated from Georgetown University.

Kezia Scales, PhD

Kezia Scales has been studying and advocating for person-centered, high-quality long-term care with a focus on direct care workers for over 15 years. In her current role as the Vice President of Research & Evaluation at PHI, Kezia leads the organization’s strategy for building the evidence base on state and national policies and workforce interventions that improve direct care jobs, elevate this essential workforce, and strengthen care processes and outcomes. Kezia is committed to disseminating research findings, policy recommendations, and best practices to diverse audiences, from policymakers to providers, researchers and advocates, and the general public. She has testified before Congress on the value of investing in the direct care workforce and has been named as a national Care Guild innovator, among other roles and honors.

Joseph W. Shega, M.D.

Joseph W. Shega, MD is Board Certified in Geriatric and Hospice and Palliative Medicine and maintains an academic appointment at the University of Central Florida as an Associate Professor of Medicine. The first 15 years of his career was in academic medicine at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago doing clinical care, education, and research including National Institutes of Health funding around serious illness and dementia care. For the past 10 years, Dr. Shega has practiced in Central Florida initially as a regional medical director, then as the national medical director, and more recently as the chief medical officer for VITAS Healthcare. In his current role, Dr. Shega has been instrumental in adapting a "mobile first" platform to bring technology to the bedside in patients homes to improve clinical care through enhanced clinical documentation, medication management, care coordination, and novel interventions such as virtual reality. Dr. Shega is co-managing editor for the Essential Practices in Hospice and Palliative Medicine and has over 50 peer-reviewed publications focusing on the care of persons with serious illness.

Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith is a 17-year home care industry expert and thought leader in Massachusetts. He is the second generation leader of a 43-year-old home care agency, Best of Care, and has overseen its growth in various roles, including Vice President, President, Chief Operating Officer, and, currently, CEO. Smith also co-founded a Care Management firm in 2018 to better serve the care planning needs of families and older adults throughout New England. Under Smith’s direction, Best of Care has completed acquisitions of Moving Mentor, a move management firm in Western Massachusetts, and Barton’s Angels, a home care agency in Northampton, Massachusetts. Kevin’s comments and thoughts can be found in various trade publications and national media outlets like The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and more. Kevin lives with his wife and children in Massachusetts. His favorite activity is cooking and loves nothing more than spending time with family on Cape Cod.

Dr. Madeline Sterling

Dr. Madeline Sterling is a practicing general internist and a health services researcher. She is an Assistant Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Director of the Initiative on Home Care Work at Cornell University. Her research aims to improve health and healthcare delivery for older adults with chronic conditions so that they can remain at home, avoid unnecessary hospitalization, and age in place. To do so, she focuses on home care, and in particular, training and empowering the home health aide workforce to improve patient care. She has authored over 85 peer-reviewed articles and secured multiple research grants, including a K23 and R01 Award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the NIH, a Doris Duke Clinical Scientist Development Award, and grants from the American Heart Association, among others. Her work has been recognized by the NIH for Women's History Month and been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and Forbes.

Ruqaiijah Yearby, J.D.

Ruqaiijah Yearby, J.D., M.P.H is the inaugural Kara J. Trott Professor in Law at the Moritz College of Law and a faculty affiliate of the Kirwan Institute at The Ohio State University. She is also Co-founder and a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Healing Justice & Equity and one of the Co-Founders of the Collaborative for Anti-Racism & Equity. Professor Yearby has received over $5 million in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study structural racism and discrimination in vaccine allocation as well as the equitable enforcement of housing laws and structural racism in the health care system. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Bioethics, American Journal of Public Health, Emory Law Journal, Health Affairs, and the Oxford Journal of Law and the Biosciences.