Our Winners
EMC2
Memory Cafés show the world how to live well with dementia.
Anne Basting
Professor, University Wisconsin – Milwaukee
Anne has 25 years of experience in the field of aging and dementia. She is an artist, author of four books and several articles, and a professor. Anne has had experience managing large-scale projects, and is the founder and Board President of Timeslips Creative Storytelling.
Susan McFadden
Co-Founder, Fox Valley Memory Project
Susan McFadden is a retired psychology professor (Professor Emerita) at UW Oshkosh. She is still active in dementia research and co-founded the Fox Valley Memory Project to help people with dementia. She has a long history of studying aging and psychology, with a focus on religion and spirituality. In her retirement, she enjoys hobbies like drumming, spending time in nature with her husband, and being with her family.
Beth Soltzberg
Director, Alzheimer’s/Related Disorders Family Support Program, JF&CS
Beth Soltzberg is a social worker who has devoted her entire career to prioritizing personality and joy in the process of aging. Currently, she directs the Alzheimer’s/Related Disorders Family Support Program at Jewish Family & Children’s Service (JF&CS) in Waltham, Massachusetts. In March of 2014, Beth launched the first intergenerational memory café in Massachusetts, and JF&CS has held a memory café every month since.
Lorenzo’s House.
Maude’s Ventures proudly made the founding investment in Lorenzo’s House. Lorezeno’s House is a new nonprofit with the mission of empowering family care partners and their loved ones by addressing the social and clinical needs of families living with younger-onset Alzheimer’s.
Lorenzo’s House provides resources and hope for families facing young-onset dementia.
Diana Shulla-Cose
Founding Executive Director, Lorenzo’s House
After her husband was diagnosed with younger-onset Alzheimer’s, Diana quickly learned about the care gap in the memory care space and decided to make meaning of this dark and isolating diagnosis by creating a place that builds community, delivers on innovation and brings light.
Ella, by TapRoot
Maude’s Ventures was excited to invest in TapRoot. TapRoot’s digital assistant, Ella, mitigates adverse behaviors in Alzheimer’s and dementia, promoting aging-in-place while supporting continuity from family care to long-term care and other care options.
This application also provides short training videos for caregivers so they are always armed with the best caregiving knowledge.
With Ella, caregivers have access to instant dementia guidance, wherever they are.
Scarlett Spring
CEO, TapRoot Interventions & Solutions, Inc.
Personally impacted by dementia, Scarlett watched a great-grandmother, grandmother, uncle, and aunt develop dementia and become unable to communicate or recognize loved ones. Finding caregivers that understood the disease was challenging. Yet, after witnessing Linda’s approach to personalizing care using information from family members and seeking to understand the drivers of dementia-related behavioral reactions, Scarlett knew they had to develop her approach and scale it. The result is TapRoot, where their approach is to tap into one’s long-term memory increasing the likelihood of a successful intervention.
Linda Buscemi
Chief Clinical Officer/Co-Founder, TapRoot Interventions & Solutions, Inc.
Co-founder and behaviorist Linda Buscemi, PhD, has worked with skilled nursing and assisted living communities for 12 years training staff and writing behavioral plans, which she calls approach plans, providing personalized interventions to aid caregivers to better mitigate behavioral expressions in persons with cognitive deficits. Her vast experience, passion and belief that behaviors stem from a stimulus and finding each person’s reason for that reaction has made her the perfect person to help in the creation of TapRoot’s digital assistant, Ella.