
Adjunct Faculty

Lisa Sweet, RN
Program Instructor, NICE
Co-Founder, National Association of Health Care Assistants
Lisa Sweet Bio
As co-founder, Lisa serves as a steward of the National Association of Health Care Assistants (NAHCA) mission and vision. In addition, she is responsible for developing state of the art learning systems and educational content to ensure the Association’s success in motivating, educating and developing frontline excellence. She is a gifted communicator and educator.
For more than 30 years Lisa has served long term care as a CNA, LPN and RN. She is uniquely positioned to develop specific core curricula to advance NAHCA members in professional development. As a former CNA, director of nursing and corporate nurse consultant she understands the educational needs and requirements of any skilled and/or assisted living community.
Lisa’s authored NAHCA’s Geriatric Care Specialist Certification program for CNAs, understanding their desire to expand their education and enhance their skills in caring for the aged. To date more than 5000 certified nursing assistants have successfully earned the distinction of Geriatric Care Specialist (GCS).

Rebecca Adelman
Founder, Adelman Law Firm and Claims Management
Rebecca Adelman Bio
Rebecca Adelman is an entrepreneur, influencer, thought leader and founder of Adelman Law Firm and Claims Management, established in 2001. The firm is a Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and Tennessee Certified Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE). For over 30 years, Rebecca has concentrated her practice in healthcare and insurance defense and business litigation.

Alice Bonner, PhD, RN, FAAN
Adjunct Faculty and Director of Strategic Partnerships,
Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing CAPABLE Program
Senior Advisor for Aging, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)
Alice Bonner Bio
Alice Bonner has been a nurse practitioner for over 30 years. She is currently Adjunct Faculty and Director of Strategic Partnerships for the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing CAPABLE Program, and Senior Advisor for Aging at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI).
Dr. Bonner received an A.B. from Cornell University in 1979, a BSN from Columbia University in 1981, an MSN from University of Massachusetts – Lowell in 1989 and a PhD from the University of Massachusetts Graduate School of Nursing in 2008.
From 2015-2019, Bonner served as Secretary of the Executive Office of Elder Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. From 2011 to 2013, Dr. Bonner served as Director of the Division of Nursing Homes in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in Baltimore, MD. Her research interests include home and community-based programs, nursing home quality, nursing workforce development, preventing and ending elder mistreatment, and preventing and ending homelessness for older adults.

Penny Cook, MSW
President/CEO, Pioneer Network
Penny Cook Bio
Penny’s commitment to changing the culture of aging and long-term care began early in her professional career as a social worker in Rochester, New York and continued as she moved to Colorado. She strongly believes that the care we provide to elders is directly related to the way we, as a society, view aging. She is passionate about spreading the message that we are in the midst of a revolution about how we age and where we do it. Penny comments that, “no matter whether people live, in nursing homes, assisted living communities or in their family home, we all deserve and should expect respectful and dignified care and support that is centered, directed and tailored to us as individuals.”
Penny previously served as the Manager of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program in the Denver metropolitan region and as the Executive Director of the Colorado Culture Change Coalition. There she expanded the Coalition’s reach to look beyond nursing homes and brought the message of culture change to assisted living communities and home care organizations. Most recently she was the Director of Long-Term Services and Supports for Colorado Access where she managed a state Medicaid contract to connect individuals to long-term services and supports. Penny received her Master of Social Work degree from the State University of New York at Albany and her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Binghamton University.

Joan Devine
Owner/Operator, JPDevine Consulting
Joan Devine Bio
Joan leads the development and implementation of educational programming for the organization. She is also a certified Eden Educator and Mentor and the owner and operator of JPDevine Consulting whose mission is to “support care partners on their journey 2 home.” A registered nurse and former activity professional, Joan has over 30 years of experience in healthcare having served in leadership positions in long-term and acute care settings since 1990. As an advocate for the LTC culture change movement, Joan serves as a frequent speaker at state and national forums and currently serves as a Director on the board of MC5 (Missouri Coalition Celebrating Care Continuum Change). Joan is the author of the book, “Word of the Week: Creating a Culture Change Dictionary, She earned a B.A. in Music Education/Music Therapy, a B.S. in Nursing and a Masters in Management.

Sonya Dolan
Chief Operating Officer, Mettle Health
Sonya Dolan Bio
Sonya is COO of Mettle Health, a company she co-founded with the goal of providing personalized, holistic consultations for individuals and families needing help navigating the practical, emotional and existential needs that come with serious illness, disability and the end of life.
Prior to Mettle Health, Sonya was a hospice administrator at Hospice by the Bay (now By the Bay Health), where she worked with teams of clinicians, patients, family members and outside vendors to provide care and services for hundreds of hospice recipients on a daily basis. Her work following hospice has centered around the need for promotion of palliative care services with Dr. BJ Miller. She was also a researcher and writer for the book, A Beginner’s Guide to the End, co-authored by BJ Miller and Shoshana Berger in 2019.
Sonya's time in healthcare has been dedicated to providing an empathetic ear to patients and caregivers, as well as educating the public on what services and resources exist to help guide people on making the best choices for themselves, or a loved one.

Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN
President, The John A. Hartford Foundation
Terry Fulmer Bio
Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN, is the President of The John A. Hartford Foundation in New York City, a foundation dedicated to improving the care of older adults. Established in 1929, the Foundation has a current endowment of more than $650 million. She serves as the chief strategist for the Foundation and her vision for better care of older adults is catalyzing the Age-Friendly Health Systems social movement. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and recently served on the independent Coronavirus Commission for Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes established to advise the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She previously served as Distinguished Professor and Dean of Health Sciences at Northeastern University. Prior, she served as the Erline Perkins McGriff Professor and Founding Dean of the New York University College of Nursing. She received her bachelor's degree from Skidmore College, her master's and doctoral degrees from Boston College and her Geriatric Nurse Practitioner Post-Master’s Certificate from NYU. She completed a Brookdale National Fellowship and she is the first nurse to have served on the board of the American Geriatrics Society. She is also the first nurse to have served as President of the Gerontological Society of America, which awarded her the 2019 Donald P. Kent Award for exemplifying the highest standards for professional leadership in the field of aging.
Dr. Fulmer is nationally and internationally recognized as a leading expert in geriatrics and is also known for conceptualization and development of the national NICHE program and research on the topic of elder abuse and neglect, work that has been funded by the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Nursing Research. She is a Trustee for the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, Springer Publishing Company, the Bassett Healthcare System, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine’s Forum on Aging, Disability, and Independence. She has served as the Chair of the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellows Program, and held board positions at Skidmore College, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the Geriatrics and Gerontology Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Advisory Board for Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Nursing. She is one of top 50 Influencers in Aging by PBS’s Next Avenue, the premier digital publication dedicated to covering issues for older Americans. Dr. Fulmer is the recipient of prestigious awards, including the American Society on Aging’s 2017 Rosalie S. Wolf Award for her body of work on elder abuse. In 2016, she received the 2016 Award for Exceptional Service to The New York Academy of Medicine for her distinguished service on the Academy’s Board of Trustees, including as vice-chair and for her active engagement in the policy work of the Academy, especially its Age-Friendly NYC initiative. She has been honored with invitations for named lectureships from noted universities. She has held faculty appointments at Columbia University, where she was the Anna C. Maxwell Chair in Nursing, and she has also held appointments at Boston College, Yale University, and the Harvard Division on Aging at Harvard Medical School. She has served as a visiting professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and Case Western Reserve University.
She is a Distinguished Practitioner of the National Academies of Practice and currently an attending nurse and senior nurse in the Yvonne L. Munn Center for Nursing Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital and an attending nurse at Mount Sinai Medical Center in NYC. Her clinical appointments have included the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the NYU Langone Medical Center. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, the Gerontological Society of America, and the New York Academy of Medicine where she served as vice-chair. She has authored over 150 peer-reviewed papers and edited 10 books.

Dr Bradley J Goad
Founder and CEO, Premier Geriatric Solutions (PGS)
Dr. Bradley J Goad Bio
Dr Bradley J Goad is a board-certified Internal Medicine and Hospice/Palliative Care physician that currently serves as the Founder and CEO of Premier Geriatric Solutions (PGS). PGS is rapidly growing and already one of the largest post acute practices in Virginia. PGS has also recently expanded into North Carolina and added mental health services.
Dr Goad received BS in Biochemistry from Virginia Tech and his medical degree from the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine. He then completed residency training in Internal Medicine at East Tennessee State University.
Following that, Dr Goad moved to Galax, VA where he worked for Carilion Clinic as a traditional Internist. It didn’t take long for him to realize that his passion lies in working with the elderly in nursing and assisted living facilities. In 2007, he founded Mid-Atlantic ElderCare (MAEC) which was a practice that provided clinical staffing to nursing and assisted living facilities in NC, VA, and TN. It was one of the largest post acute practices in the country and significantly elevated the standard of care in all facilities and communities that it serviced. MAEC later merged with Team Health which still has some presence in the area. He worked with Team Health during the transition for two years and then left to pursue other ventures.
Dr Goad served as Assistant Professor and Clinical Faculty Member at the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine for several years. He is co-author of a recently published geriatric clinical reference book called “Geriatric Notes.” He also proudly served 10 years in the Air Force Reserve as a Flight Surgeon. During that time, he was deployed to Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iraq as well as provided leadership and clinical care in Medical Readiness Exercises in Nicaragua and Paraguay.
Dr Goad currently lives with his wife and 2 children at Smith Mountain Lake. He enjoys spending time on the lake, reading, hiking, aviation, and entrepreneurship.

Christina Hardin-Weiss, MS CCC/SLP
Co-Founder, Adaptive Equipment & Caregiving Corner, LLC
Christina Hardin-Weiss Bio
Christina graduated from Eastern Illinois University with a Master’s Degree in Speech/Language/Dysphagia Therapy. She enjoys working with individuals who have dementia and their families as well as those that have difficulty eating, chewing, and swallowing due to illness or disease.

Cindy Hardin-Weiss, MSPT
Co-Founder, Adaptive Equipment & Caregiving Corner, LLC
Cindy Hardin-Weiss Bio
Cindy graduated in 1992 with a Master’s Degree in Physical Therapy from Washington University in St Louis, MO. Her passion is to assist people in maintaining their independence, especially when it makes the difference in their ability to remain in their home.

Kim McRae, FCTA
Founder & Owner, Have a Good Life
Kim McRae Bio
Kim McRae is a consultant, speaker, educator and advocate. She is also an Educator and Mentor for The Eden Alternative®. Through her company, Have a Good Life, Kim works with organizations as a thought leader, change agent and subject matter expert on caregiving, culture change, person-directed living, and person-centered dementia care.
As a FCTA (Family Caregiver Turned Advocate), Kim comes to person-directed living and person-centered dementia care through a 12-year history as a family caregiver for four parents/in-laws. In 2001, at the age of 35, she became a full-time caregiver for her mother who was then 62 living with yet undiagnosed Lewy body dementia and progressive supranuclear palsy. Prior to becoming a family caregiver, she was an integrated marketing professional for over fourteen years.
Since 2006, Kim has been involved with Pioneer Network, the national organization advancing the culture change movement and she co-founded the Culture Change Network of Georgia in 2008. Kim was one of the Founding Board of Directors for the national Dementia Action Alliance (DAA) and has been actively involved in the Georgia Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias (GARD) State Plan Task Force since 2013.
She is currently a consultant on the $1.5 million CMP grant, A Trauma-Informed Approach to Improving Dementia Care in Georgia Nursing Homes and was a consultant on the $1.6 million CMP grant, Building Resources for Delivering Person-Centered Care in Georgia Nursing Homes. Both are a partnership between the Culture Change Network of Georgia and the Gerontology Institute at Georgia State University.
She is contributing to numerous boards, task forces and committees focused on developing programs, providing education, and advocating for changes that will improve the lives of elders and those that care about them, and has been actively working to improve quality of life for elders and their care partners for more than twenty years.

Bruce (BJ) Miller, MD
Co-Founder, Mettle Health
Dr. BJ Miller Bio
Dr. BJ Miller is a longtime hospice and palliative medicine physician and educator. He currently sees patients and families via telehealth through Mettle Health, a company he co-founded with the aim to provide personalized, holistic consultations for any patient or caregiver who needs help navigating the practical, emotional and existential issues that come with serious illness and disability.
BJ has worked in all settings of care: hospital, clinic, residential facility, and home. Led by his own experiences as a patient, BJ advocates for the roles of our senses, community and presence in designing a better ending. His interests are in working across disciplines to affect broad-based culture change, cultivating a civic model for aging and dying and furthering the message that suffering, illness, and dying are fundamental and intrinsic aspects of life. His career has been dedicated to moving healthcare towards a human centered approach, on a policy as well as a personal level.
BJ has given over 100 talks nationally, and internationally, on the topics of death, dying, palliative care and the intersection of healthcare with design. His 2015 TED Talk: “Not Whether But How” (aka “What Matters Most at the End of Life”), has been viewed over 11 million times and his work has also been the subject of multiple interviews and podcasts, including Oprah Winfrey, PBS, The New York Times, The California Sunday Magazine, GOOP, Krista Tippett, Tim Ferriss and the TED Radio Hour. His book, A Beginner’s Guide to the End, was co-authored with Shoshana Berger and published in 2019.
Additional Info
Following undergraduate studies in art history at Princeton, BJ received his MD from University of California San Francisco as a Regents' Scholar and completed his internal medicine residency at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, California, where he served as chief resident. He completed a fellowship in hospice and palliative medicine at Harvard Medical School, with clinical duties split between Massachusetts General Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Dr. Miller is a member of the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and has received their Palliative Medicine Community Leadership Award. He serves as a Medical Advisor for the Partnership for Palliative Care, and is the Honorary Medical Chair to the Dream Foundation, a nonprofit organization that serves terminally ill adults and their families.

Jamie Smith
Nursing Assistant, RN, Nurse Practitioner, Premier Geriatric Solutions (PGS)
Jamie Smith Bio
Jamie Smith has worked roughly 14 years in healthcare, serving as a nursing assistant, registered nurse, and later transitioning to a nurse practitioner. She has worked in various settings, including the home setting, trauma intensive care, emergency room, and medical step-down units. Jamie found through her years of experience that her passion is serving as a nurse practitioner in nursing home facilities. She is an educator and author of a medical book titled Geriatric Notes. Jamie and Dr. Bradley Goad developed the videos associated with Infectious Disease and Control.

Diana (Wade) Sturdevant, Ph.D., GCNS-BC, APRN, CWS
Program Director, University of Oklahoma, Fran and Earl Ziegler College of Nursing
Diana Sturdevant Bio
Experienced Director of Nursing Services with a demonstrated history of working in the Long-term health care industry. Skilled in Healthcare Consulting, Medicaid, Physician Relations, Medicare, and U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Strong healthcare services professional with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) focused in Nursing Science from University of Oklahoma College of Nursing. Certified Wound Specialist, Certified Gerontological Clinical Nurse Specialist, Advanced Practice Registered Nurse.

Dr. Michael Wasserman
Geriatrician, Editor-in-Chief, Geriatric Medicine: A Person-Centered Evidence Based Approach
Dr. Wasserman Bio