Mission & Vision

Growing up, I always knew I wanted to work in the medical field. In high school, I had the opportunity to take a class to become a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) and thought "why not?". When I graduated high school in 2010 as a Junior, at 17, I went straight to college to pursue Nursing school. During that time, I got my first CNA job and moved out on my own. I realized very quickly that Nursing school was not my first passion and that I enjoyed working a lot more than academics. At that moment, I dropped out of college and focused on work. It was my work experience that gave me such passion. I started working with the Senior population at an Assisted Living Community, where I absolutely fell in love with my job. Working with the "old people" brought me such an insurmountable amount of joy and I took such pride in my work. I was lucky enough to have leaders who saw my potential and encouraged me to take the company's Leadership in Training program to become a director. Upon completion of that, I landed my first Assisted Living Coordinator (Manager) job at 22 years old.  I did that for about 2 years but still felt like something was missing. During this time, I also decided to go back to school to get my Associates Degree in Business. Yet, something was still missing. I found myself spending more and more time with my residents who were experiencing cognitive impairment and memory loss. I loved the moments I got to spend with them, navigating through their memory loss and helping families through the grieving process. I knew at that moment, I was destined to work with individuals with Dementia. When there was a Reminiscence Coordinator (Memory Care Director) position open in my company, I quickly applied and landed the position. It was there that I received training and did the research on the topic and fell completely in LOVE with helping others understand it too. I hosted trainings with my front line team members, talking about the different types of Dementia, the approaches to create pleasant interactions, activities that promoted pleasant days in memory care, and the list goes on. As a Memory Care Director, I spent a lot of time working with families as well and providing a lot of advocacy, support, and education for them. It was then that I decided to go back to school for Social Work. I felt I was doing a lot of the work, just without the proper education. I graduated from Aurora University with a Bachelor's in Social Work. I decided to take the next step in my career and became an Executive Director, where I have held this position ever since. This role fills all of my "buckets", if you will. I still get to work with residents living with dementia, I get to work with families navigating through the journey, and I also get to make an impact on front line team members, providing continuous education and support to help create pleasant days for our residents living with Dementia. It was because of my passion for this field that I started Dementia Connections Collective; to help other communities and health care providers invest in the education of their front line team members to help better serve the residents they work with, as well as families navigate through the process.