The Experts
Michael Adams
Michael Adams is the Chief Executive Officer of SAGE (Advocacy and Services for LGBTQ+ Elders), the world’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBTQ+ older people. Prior to joining SAGE, Adams was the Director of Education and Public Affairs for Lambda Legal. Before this role, he spent a decade leading cutting edge litigation that established new rights for LGBTQ+ people, first as Associate Director of the ACLU’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, and then as Deputy Legal Director at Lambda Legal. A graduate of Stanford Law School and Harvard College, Adams has authored numerous publications on an array of LGBTQ+ issues. He has taught law school courses on sexual orientation and gender identity and has served on advisory councils for AARP, the American Society on Aging, and the New York City Department for the Aging among others. He is also the former Chair of the American Society on Aging.
Ashton Applewhite
Ashton Applewhite is the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism and the co-founder of the Old School Anti-Ageism Clearinghouse. An internationally recognized expert on ageism, she speaks widely at venues that have included the TED mainstage and the United Nations, has written for Harper’s, the Guardian, and the New York Times, and is the voice of Yo, Is This Ageist?. Ashton is at the forefront of the emerging movement to raise awareness of ageism and to dismantle it. In 2022 the Decade of Healthy Aging, a UN + WHO collaboration, named Ashton one of the Healthy Aging 50: fifty leaders transforming the world to be a better place to grow older.
Robert Espinoza (Host)
Robert Espinoza is a national expert in aging, caregiving, and long-term care workforce issues. For more than 20 years, he has spearheaded high-profile advocacy campaigns and written seminal reports on aging and long-term care, LGBTQ+ rights, and other social issues. Robert is currently the Executive Vice President of Policy at PHI, where he oversees its national advocacy and public education division on the direct care workforce, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution. In 2020, he was selected for the first-ever CARE 100 list of the most innovative people working to re-imagine how we care in America today and as one of Next Avenue's 2020 Influencers in Aging. In 2021, he testified before Congress on the interventions needed to strengthen the direct care workforce. Robert also serves on the board of directors for the American Society on Aging, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the FrameWorks Institute.
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.
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.
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.
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.