Today we’d like to introduce you to Meg LaPorte.

Meg, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?

(I live in the District of Columbia but that option was not offered in the above states to select for most relevant to me.)

I began working for associations in the D.C. area some 35 years ago, after I graduated college and finished an internship with C-SPAN. I worked for the government affairs and public policy departments for organizations that represented various groups of people, such as beer wholesalers and podiatrists. But n 2000, I landed a job with the association that represents physicians who are medical directors in nursing homes. Wow! What a revelation it was to meet so many people who cared so much for elders. My initiation to eldercare had me hooked. Since then, I have worked in some form or another to advocate for elders as well as for certified nursing assistants (CNAs), the direct care professionals who work closest to residents in nursing homes.

A few years later, I began working for a trade magazine that goes to long-term and post-acute care professionals in nursing homes and assisted living communities. As managing editor of this monthly publication I had the distinct pleasure of telling the stories of the incredible people who work in the field — from administrators, nurses, and activity professionals to social workers, owners, operators, and more. The people I was most drawn to were certified nursing assistants, as they are the largest contingent of workforce in long-term care and they work closest to the residents. I learned that they are also paid the least — at minimum wage and often below what’s considered living wages. This stuck with me and helped to shape my current work.

After 8 years at this job, I decided to get my MA in Management of Aging Services at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County via their Erickson School of Aging Studies. After graduating, I left the magazine job and began consulting on my own doing communications, PR, and marketing. I also began working on a passion project called Age In America (ww.w.ageinamerica.blog), a blog that was fashioned after Humans of New York, in which I interviewed older adults about their lives, took their photos, and posted the images, along with their responses, on a website and social media — as a way to dismantle stereotypes about age and being older. I think there was an element of the work in which I was working out my own biases about being older. I learned so much from this work, including that 98 percent of the interviewees had never wished they were younger. At the time, I was surprised by this — although I now know it’s the norm.

Fast forward a few years, when the pandemic was in full swing, I had a second-row seat to how COVID was affecting nursing homes and its residents. As the director of communications for The Green House Project, a nonprofit that develops non-institutional nursing homes that foster person-directed care and empowered staff, I saw how difficult it was to get PPE, the deleterious affect it had on care staff, and the impact of the shutdowns on residents and staff. While traditional nursing homes with shared bedrooms and bathrooms were devastated by virus, Green House homes experienced significantly less incidents of COVID and deaths. As we began measuring these data and getting the word out about it, media coverage from local, national, and international outlets became constant. This experience opened my eyes to the need for change in this field, and the fact that ageism is the original sin of the institutional model of eldercare in this country.

As I pondered this throughout 2020 and into the next year, I began a months-long conversation with my friend, Jordan, about what we could do together to dismantle ageism in senior living and elsewhere. Since we were both creatives who are passionate about the arts, and I had taught a college course about leveraging art and creativity to dismantle stereotypes about older adults and aging, we essentially decided to activate the syllabus and turn it into a nonprofit now known as Art Against Ageism (www.artagainstageism.org).

This happened back in August of 2021. Since then, Jordan and I have had an incredible journey of creating artistic endeavors that tackle ageism and advance positive age beliefs. This includes placing interactive art installations in the lobby of a nursing home, where passersby are asked to ponder their feelings about age and ageism; creating large-scale, temporary murals on the outdoor walls of a nursing home to raise awareness of people who live and work inside of the communities; and developing a workshop that includes the creation of story quilts via art kits that raise awareness of ageism and advance positive age beliefs.

Related to my passion for combatting ageism is another hat I wear as executive director of the Maryland Regional Direct Services Collaborative, a nonprofit coalition of entities and individuals that work together to improve job quality for direct care professionals as well as seek solutions for recruitment and retention for employers. This work led me to co-author a report in 2023 on direct care professionals in the Baltimore area. I am very proud of this report, as it served as evidence to support an effort by the mayor of Baltimore and the SEIU Training and Employment Fund to compensate all direct care staff who worked in the city for a long-term care provider during the pandemic with a $500 grant. Because the work we do with the Collaborative is directly related to elder advocacy, I find a lot of crossover in my anti-ageism work.

As I continue my work with these two organizations, their missions become more and more congruous. As I see it, direct care professionals and elders are among the two most marginalized groups of people in aging services and they are closest together in senior living settings. Certified nursing assistants in nursing homes, for example, do the most hands-on care of residents. This relationship is crucial to ensuring quality of care, and in many ways, the quality of life for residents. Many CNAs do their work for many years, despite very low pay, because they care so much about the elders who live in the homes where they work. I believe that one of the reasons CNAs are paid so little is rooted in ageism — and in the fact that elders are regarded as less valuable by society and by a broken long-term care system.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

In the past, many of the challenges I have faced are related to my own feelings of imposter syndrome, which stemmed from both my own self-esteem, as well as working for many years in a male-dominated field. I started my career in the 1980s, when organizations in the Washington, D.C. area were led by men. Fresh out of college, I was shy but very curious and eager-to-learn, albeit full of feelings of inadequacy that were likely fueled by being ignored or dismissed by colleagues and supervisors. I no longer have those feelings — and I am now, at the age of 57, feeling more confident and more knowledgeable and skillful as ever.

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?

My industry, eldercare or also known as aging services, is poised to be among the largest industries in the world over the next ten years as the population of older adults balloon to 82 million by 2050, from around 58 million today. This means that people older than 65 will make up 23 percent of the population. the potential for workforce solutions, technology, and other things that address the challenges that elders and their caregivers will face are enormous.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.artagainstageism.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/art_against_ageism/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtAgainstAgeism?mibextid=kFxxJD
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/78367172/admin/dashboard/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@artagainstageism9231

Image Credits

Meg LaPorte, for Art Against Ageism

Photo 1: An art installation called “Aging Pages,” created by Michelle Olson, PhD for the Pioneer Network conference in 2022.

Photo 2: From the Art Against Ageism “Own Your Age” Photo Booth, created to encourage people of all ages to own their ages as a creative way to dismantle age bias.

Photo 3: Jack and Jessie (the dog), from the Age In America project.