Embracing, Making, Shaping Change: Annual Meeting 2026, Day 1

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Speaking to nearly 6,000 members gathered in Philadelphia on Monday, October 26, 2026, Board Chair Hinrichs reflects on what's needed to build a better future.

Change-those who make it, and how it is made-was front and center as LeadingAge board chair Christie Hinrichs welcomed nearly 6,000 LeadingAge members to the 2026 Annual Meeting on Monday, October 26.

On stage at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Hinrichs, president and CEO of Frasier, a life plan community in Boulder, Colorado, who took the helm January 1 following her November 2025 induction, spoke frankly. "The longer I've spent in this field, the more I've come to believe that we've been looking at changemakers all wrong. Real change rarely begins with a title," she said. "Real change begins with a belief: A belief that things can be better than they are today. A belief that a problem that has existed for decades doesn't have to exist forever."

"I've seen it in large organizations and small ones, in urban communities and rural communities, in organizations with abundant resources and organizations that are making every dollar stretch a little further," she said. "What struck me wasn't the size of the project or the sophistication of the idea. What struck me was the audacity." Innovation, she added, starts with a question. And changemakers are people brave enough to ask it.

Recognizing the work of members who "inspire me most," by their willingness to learn, to "ask difficult questions," she lauded the multitudes of providers who have built what is today's aging services sector by imagining a different future for older adults and not accepting the status quo, when "growing older was too often viewed through a lens of limitation."

Rejecting those ideas, they imagined a future where aging was instead seen as a time of "dignity instead of decline, community instead of isolation, and purpose instead of irrelevance." Every community represented in this room, she said, is evidence of that imagination.

"That is our inheritance," she stated. "And now it is our responsibility," acknowledging the sector's challenges. Those, she said, "are real." And, calling possibility "also real," she noted it is "represented by every organization that continues serving older adults despite obstacles."

Those who take action, who look at difficulty and decide to build anyway, who see uncertainty and decide to lead anyway, she said, are choosing hope-a form of action. "It is believing that our best days can still be ahead of us and then doing the work required to make that true."

What makes her optimistic about the future of aging services? The people who are "in this room:

Leaders. Caregivers. Innovators. Mentors. Problem-solvers. People who continue showing up every day, determined to improve the lives of older adults. They are the changemakers."

Improvements are made not by those who wait for permission, for perfect conditions, or for others to dip their toes in first. "A changemaker," she said, "is simply someone who decides that the future can be better and is willing to help build it, by those who believe they can shape it: It is something history will say we created."

Having traveled to member communities over the past year, she spoke of the people she's met, who have the imagination to think about a future that doesn't yet exist-and who have the imagination and the courage to create it.