Donna, thanks for taking time to talk to us today. How about we start by you sharing with us a little bit of about yourself, your career so far, all the way to being the Chief Strategy Officer of Parker?

Donna Silbert: I joined Parker about four years ago as the head of business development and then recently was given the role of Chief Strategy Officer. This is my first experience in healthcare, and long-term care. I’ve been here about four years. The majority of my career I spent in the consumer goods market, in strategy and business development, product development, and marketing. And when I was looking to do a little career change, someone said ‘Hey, Parker’s looking for some people to do strategy’ and I said, well I don’t know enough about healthcare, but I thought let me go have a conversation with them. And I did, and what I realized is that strategic planning and business development is the same no matter if you’re doing product, service. It doesn’t matter. And I looked at this as an opportunity to be in a very exciting market, an extremely fast-growing market, a challenging market, and so it looked like a great spot for me and I’ve been here about four years leading their strategic work.

Tell us a little bit about your vision and the brand itself.

Donna Silbert: Parker’s been in the Aging Services field for over 110 years and we call ourselves 110 years young. And we were always about family, community and value. But as we really have moved away from just having nursing home and assisted living. We said, we need to broaden our look and broaden our view.

So, we took some time to really look at strategic branding and what do we want to be as we move forward for the next 100 years. And what we really looked at is, we looked at aging as how do people see aging and almost want to take the negative notions about aging away. So what we’re really doing is looking at how do we challenge people, how do we change views, how do we look at things and really make aging part of life. It is a huge part of life; it is not the end of your life. It is a huge part of your life.

So Parker’s everyday mission is about making aging part of life in all that we do. And so we’ve rebranded. We’ve created a new mission, a new vision by which we’re moving forth. So not only are we in homes and doing homes, but really looking at how we really expand into home and community-based services. We think technology is a way for us to be a differentiator in that space and we look at how could Parker now, granted we’re in the central part of New Jersey, but how could we impact this field in a bigger way. And so that’s what we’re about doing and trying to move this forward and really make aging part of life for all of us.

What are your thoughts about the newer technologies or what’s your view of the technologies that you are using today?

Donna Silbert: If you look at Parker, I separate the infrastructure of our technology. I’ll leave that to the CIO to deal with that and make sure that we have everything we need to function and operate. I look at how can we take technologies, whether they’re EarlySense, whether they’re telehealth, whether they’re these new Soles, Smart Soles and how do we pilot them in our homes today with the people that live with us, so that ultimately we’ve learned enough that we can take it out on the market as we go into the home and community-based space.

I think in some ways it’s overwhelming the amount of technology that exists. So what we’re trying to figure out is what’s the criteria we would choose something, over something else? How do we decide? Can’t-do everything; so how do we be smart about it, and methodical about it. And it’s all about allowing people to be home, be safe in their home, and so how do we keep moving those forwards, testing things and then putting them into the marketplace?

But there’s so much you can do, but I think you have to choose. And so we’ve chosen things around falls; we’ve chosen things around elopement; chosen things around telehealth. But we’re really just in the infancy of looking at all that.

You’ve been a part of LeadingAge CAST for some time. So what is the impact of your partnership with CAST on your technology initiatives?

Donna Silbert: As I look at CAST, I think we’ve been a member for about a couple of years now. But we’ve had a long-standing relationship with LeadingAge. I see CAST as three things. One, they’re a connector. They are connecting us to other people who are doing really good work in this space. I think, two, they’re connecting with people who have had challenges and have had some mistakes, and so we can learn from other people’s mistakes, where we’re not quite leading-edge in our technology. We’re trying to catch up, but we can learn from everybody else; and why not? And then third, I think that they do a lot of testing of the product and their impact and outcomes for the senior population. And so we can learn and kind of go through some of the recommendations that are coming out of CAST.

I think it’s an important group and everyday you hear something new that somebody else is working on. Like yesterday, you know, writing all the notes about all the things we need to go take a look at and investigate. So I think they’ve been very helpful to guide this field in a very complex area.

There are a lot of Millennials that are entering the healthcare and the healthcare IT industry. They usually look up to leaders like you and say how can I be Donna? How can I be the Chief Strategy Officer of an organization like Parker in the future? So what’s your advice to those people?

Donna Silbert: I think that my advice, I learned this a long time ago, is that it’s okay to ask questions. And you know we all can’t know everything. And so, use the people around you to ask questions, to evolve your thinking, to evolve what’s going to make a better product or service. And not be afraid to really, you know, kind of be vulnerable in some ways. But asking the people around you to help you. And I have seen in my short tenure in this healthcare field, if I didn’t ask the questions I had asked, I’d be in a lot of trouble. So it really is around, it’s really okay. And that’s it my advice to anyone, listen and ask questions, and you will be able to sail along in your career.

Donna, thank you so much for taking time to talk to us today and sharing so many insights with us. Really appreciated. Have a good rest of the conference.