Marcus Riley, executive chairman of BallyCara, a nonprofit, full-continuum provider in Scarborough, Queensland, Australia, and a board member and past chair of the Global Ageing Network, has been chosen to receive the 2025 Award of Honor, LeadingAge’s most prestigious award. The Award will be presented Monday, November 3, at the 2025 LeadingAge Annual Meeting and Global Ageing Network Biennial Conference in Boston, MA.

It’s fitting that Riley will receive the award in 2025, not only because of the once-per-decade co-location of the Global Ageing Network and LeadingAge conferences, but also because this year the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution to establish an intergovernmental working group to draft a legally binding Convention on the Human Rights of Older Persons. Achieving this milestone—a longstanding goal for the Global Ageing Network, which is a non-governmental organization (NGO) with Special Consultative Status at the UN—was, in large part, thanks to the efforts of Riley, who helped to raise the network’s international status throughout his years as one of its main UN representatives. Riley’s other significant contributions to building the Global Ageing Network’s reputation and impact include leading its rebrand from the International Association of Homes and Services for the Ageing (IAHSA) during his tenure as chair. Executive Director Katie Smith Sloan considers that one of its major turning points.

Commitment to Working Across Borders

Riley’s work with international ageing organizations has been persistent and wide-ranging. He has served on the Steering Committee of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People (GAROP), which he said, “harnesses the NGO community and translates that into effective advocacy, but also [gets] the voice of the older person heard in the right places.” In his own part of the globe, Riley serves as the “Regional Focal Point” for the Asia-Pacific region of the Stakeholder Group on Ageing, which is helping implement the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Working with the international community is fulfilling, Riley said, but in seeing how the political bureaucracy works, “You come away equal parts inspired and frustrated with those processes.” However, he added, “It is indeed our responsibility to have that international connection to other [providers] and to look at how we are influencing and impacting in a positive way at that level, and what that can mean at regional and national levels as well.”

Gravitating to a Career with Impact and Opportunity

Riley’s first exposure to aging services—and BallyCara—was at age 17, when he worked at its Scarborough Retirement Village as a gardener. He returned years later as an administrator, his first professional job in aging services, and worked his way up to become executive chairman in 2020.

He says his experiences with the organization—the formal learning as he built his career paired with “the lived experience” of working day-to-day with older people, the organization’s willingness to embrace ideas and not be limited in its thinking, and its wellness-oriented approach—confirmed for him that he had chosen the right field. He also credits a resident, Raymond “Flick” Walsh, for teaching him a profound lesson: “I observed his positivity and his humility, and his energy to foster people’s engagement and socialization. I remember the penny dropping and seeing the impact he [had on] people’s lives. I started to realize the sort of impact you could have, and the opportunity there is for people to age more positively.”

A forward-looking, positive attitude that draws the best out of life clearly animates Riley. He puts great emphasis on BallyCara’s “way of being” called Sona® (the Gaelic word for happiness), that values the well-being of every individual, creativity in collaboration and innovation, and authentic, transparent integrity. Those values are tied to a set of organizational behaviors, all human-centered and built on respect, growth, and two-way communication.

He is also committed to helping older adults overcome the negativity too often associated with aging, arguing that we should embrace our later years and seize opportunities to live with positivity and passion. It’s the central principle of his 2018 book, Booming: A Life-Changing Philosophy for Ageing Well, which later led him to launch the Booming ageing agency and podcast.

“Reflecting on my work … and the older people who I’ve had relationships with, I came to the realization there were reasons why some people aged quite successfully, and why some people didn’t age quite so successfully,” Riley said. “A key word is agency; often we talk about the challenges for people as they age to retain that level of control and have a sense of agency over their life.”

Valuing Relationships and Continuous Learning

Riley has served as an instructor with the Global Ageing Network Leadership Program, leading sessions with fellow board member Donald Macaskill of Scottish Care. “We spoke about a global vision for aged care and long-term care. You know, one of those small, easy topics,” he said, laughing. “Having seen the leadership program, I’m acutely aware of the benefits for people who participate, and importantly, the relationships and connections they form with people from different parts of the world, and … the shared learning because of those relationships.”

Riley’s optimism about aging for individuals carries over to his beliefs about working with providers from around the globe: “The more you see from the international perspective, the more you realize that there’s a lot of commonality, both in terms of our challenges, but also opportunities,” he said. “Often I’m asked, ‘Who’s got the right system or the best models?’ My response is that there’s no one place that has all the answers, but there’s something to learn from everywhere and everyone, and always something to share with others as well.”