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Being Human: Creating Agency, Intimacy and Yes, Development, with Dementia

A conversation with Nettie Harper, Katharine Houpt, Susan Massad and Mary Radnofsky

Across the globe, people with dementia, their health care support teams, care partners and dementia rights advocates are challenging the fear and stigma-inducing “tragedy narrative” that distorts how people living along the dementia spectrum are seen. We choose to embrace a new perspective and work together, combining our collective strength, humanity, agency and creativity to build living environments in which all people can embrace uncertainty and experience dignity, discovery and development.

Please join our panel of innovators for a new conversation about dementia, and living life.

Nettie Harper is co-founder of Inspired Memory Care, Inc. Nettie’s focus has been to highlight elders’ strengths and self-worth through well-designed programming. For over 20 years, she has been a leader in the fields of memory care and recreation therapy, securing New York State grants to improve the quality of dementia care services in skilled nursing facilities, and developing globally-implemented training programs for some of the most well-regarded memory care programs in Florida and New York.

Katharine Houpt is an artist, art therapist, and licensed clinical professional counselor in Chicago. For the past eight years, she has worked with people facing life transitions ranging from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, to grief and loss, to sense of purpose. Katharine facilitates individual and group art therapy sessions as well as socially engaged community-building experiences. She is a Lecturer in the Art Therapy department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Susan Massad is a retired physician with 51 years of practice and teaching in internal medicine. For the past 37 years, she has been a builder of the All Stars Project and the East Side Institute. In 2006, Susan launched the All Stars Projects’ senior theater workshop, the New Timers, and as a faculty member of the East Side Institute leads ongoing conversations on health, wellness and growing older. She has also written a play, Remember? Remember!, that deals with aging and memory loss.

Mary Radnofsky is a former ghostwriter and college professor of Education and Human Development, French, Astronomy and Qualitative Research. She was founding president of the Socrates Institute, a non-profit educational organization for over twenty years. Mary is the first person with dementia to advocate for people with dementia at the UN; she also speaks at conferences, leads workshops and is writing a book on human rights for people with dementia that will be released later this year.











When: Mon., Jun. 25, 2018 at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Where: NYU School of Law
40 Washington Square S.
212-998-6040
Price: $40 in advance/$30 low income/senior/student
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A conversation with Nettie Harper, Katharine Houpt, Susan Massad and Mary Radnofsky

Across the globe, people with dementia, their health care support teams, care partners and dementia rights advocates are challenging the fear and stigma-inducing “tragedy narrative” that distorts how people living along the dementia spectrum are seen. We choose to embrace a new perspective and work together, combining our collective strength, humanity, agency and creativity to build living environments in which all people can embrace uncertainty and experience dignity, discovery and development.

Please join our panel of innovators for a new conversation about dementia, and living life.

Nettie Harper is co-founder of Inspired Memory Care, Inc. Nettie’s focus has been to highlight elders’ strengths and self-worth through well-designed programming. For over 20 years, she has been a leader in the fields of memory care and recreation therapy, securing New York State grants to improve the quality of dementia care services in skilled nursing facilities, and developing globally-implemented training programs for some of the most well-regarded memory care programs in Florida and New York.

Katharine Houpt is an artist, art therapist, and licensed clinical professional counselor in Chicago. For the past eight years, she has worked with people facing life transitions ranging from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, to grief and loss, to sense of purpose. Katharine facilitates individual and group art therapy sessions as well as socially engaged community-building experiences. She is a Lecturer in the Art Therapy department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Susan Massad is a retired physician with 51 years of practice and teaching in internal medicine. For the past 37 years, she has been a builder of the All Stars Project and the East Side Institute. In 2006, Susan launched the All Stars Projects’ senior theater workshop, the New Timers, and as a faculty member of the East Side Institute leads ongoing conversations on health, wellness and growing older. She has also written a play, Remember? Remember!, that deals with aging and memory loss.

Mary Radnofsky is a former ghostwriter and college professor of Education and Human Development, French, Astronomy and Qualitative Research. She was founding president of the Socrates Institute, a non-profit educational organization for over twenty years. Mary is the first person with dementia to advocate for people with dementia at the UN; she also speaks at conferences, leads workshops and is writing a book on human rights for people with dementia that will be released later this year.

Buy tickets/get more info now