EP 88 Nora Super | Executive Director, Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging

04/27/22 • 47 min

In Episode 88 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen talks to Nora Super, Executive Director of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, whose mission is to help people build meaningful lives, in which they can experience health and well-being, pursue effective education and gainful employment, and access the resources required to create ever-expanding opportunities for themselves and their broader communities. Stephen and Nora Super talk about the importance of support for our aging population, being an effective leader through vulnerability, and creating policies aligned with the needs of those with lived experiences.

Nora Super is the executive director of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging. In this role, Super provides strategic direction for two primary focus areas: Healthy Longevity and Financial Wellness. In 2020, Super launched the Milken Institute Alliance to Improve Dementia Care, which seeks to transform and improve the complex health and long-term care systems that people at risk for and living with dementia must navigate. Super is a respected thought leader, frequent speaker, and prolific writer on healthy longevity and the economic and social impact of global population aging. From 2014 to 2016, Super served as the executive director of the White House Conference on Aging, where she received wide recognition for her nationwide efforts to improve the lives of older Americans. She has also held leadership roles at the US Department of Health and Human Services, AARP, Kaiser Permanente, and USAging.

Nora Super on the importance of involving those with lived experiences in policy creation:
It's important to us to always make sure that we have people with lived experience as part of all the policy decisions we have. We make many policy recommendations and we want to make sure in all those conversations that we have someone who's living with dementia themselves or a caregiver of someone who's living with dementia to give us their real experience and feedback. This input stress tests the policies because sometimes people in government or research institutions think a policy will work on the ground but the people who are living with this may see issues we didn't so they will tell us, this makes a difference to them, or no. We get a lot of good feedback about what's too complicated, what's helpful, what they wish they had known earlier and those comments help drive our work.

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EP 87 Robert Freiri | Executive Director, Gateway Center of Monterey County

In Episode 87 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen talks to Robert Feiri, Executive Director of Gateway Center of Monterey County, whose mission is to serve adults with Developmental Disabilities by fully supporting their individual rights and choices, and empowering them to live full and productive lives with dignity and independence within the community. Stephen and Robert Feiri talk about sustaining motivation through challenging times, breaking old habits to bring future successes, and the importance of a peer support system.

Robert Freiri is the Executive Director of Gateway Center of Monterey County. He has been a nonprofit Executive Director for 23 years including seven years as Habitat for Humanity's Executive Director and seven years as the Executive Director of Chamberlain’s Children Center. Robert has also been a Nonprofit Manager for 35 years.

Robert Feiri on sustaining motivation in challenging times:

I think that what always kept me going is the focus on our mission, to make sure that even if it's been a tough day or we didn't win that day, that we're still on track to succeed at our mission and meet the needs of our clients. For me, when it's been a rough day I make sure that before I leave, I'll walk into the residential facility and spend 20 minutes with one or two of the residents. That always reminds me why I'm here and why we all do the good work that we do. That's what recharges me more than anything so that I can be ready to go and hit the challenges the next day. In the end it's really about the people that you serve and if you're doing a good job with that, your batteries will stay charged.

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EP 89 Thomas Canavan | Executive Director, National Law Enforcement Museum

In Episode 89 of the Charity Charge Show, Stephen talks to Thomas Canavan, Executive Director of National Law Enforcement Museum, whose mission is to honor the role of law enforcement, in service to society, by recognizing the sacrifices and valor of law enforcement, educating the community, and making it safer for those who serve. Stephen and Thomas Canavan talk about the effect of COVID-19 on the National Law Enforcement Museum and how CALEB (Community Alliances and Law Enforcement Bulletin Network) is bringing communities and law enforcement together.

Thomas Canavan is the Executive Director of the National Law Enforcement Museum and beginning in late 2019 began refocusing the Museum into what it is today...a place that honors the history and heroism of law enforcement officers. Thomas leads the Museum’s operations which includes exhibitions, education, outreach, and fostering strategic partnerships, all of which focuses on telling the story of American law enforcement.

Thomas is an accomplished non-profit professional with leadership expertise in developing exhibitions as well as educational and outreach programs that focus on building thriving communities. His experience includes establishing collaborative program environments; development and oversight of innovative educational programming; and cultivating strategic partnerships and alliances between local government, corporate sector, and nonprofit organizations. He holds a Master of Science, Arts Administration from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts, Studio Art from the University of Maryland.

Thomas Canavan on using social media to bring communities and law enforcement together:

After the death of George Floyd, there was a lot of unrest around the country, and the relationship between communities and law enforcement, in certain places, was very strained. In this environment we as an organization we were thinking about our platform, and the connections that we have to the law enforcement community as a whole and wanted to see if it were possible to pull together best practices within that community on a national level. We ended up creating CALEB (Community Alliances and Law Enforcement Bulletin Network) a national bulletin board, where we invited people to post what works in their communities to see if we could make something positive happen. Once we had collected a lot of ideas, we saw that a lot of engagement was happening in other parts of the country. Overall we wanted to create a social media platform that was built and designed so that the law enforcement community and the public could come together to have a dialogue about what's working in their communities. We want to help pull all this information for the benefit of engagement with law enforcement who are really busy, working long hours in long stretches of days in a row. CALEB is a really great project and we're hoping that more people will hear about it and start to participate.