The EFA Design Champions awards program was launched this spring to recognize the individuals who are advancing the design of senior living environments, those who have fought for design solutions that make a meaningful improvement in the lives of residents, staff, or the greater community. The winners will be recognized during an awards luncheon at the 2019 EFA Expo & Conference in Salt Lake City. Read more about them in the Summer 2018 issue of Environments for Aging and here online in extended interviews.

Jill Wilson
President and CEO, Otterbein SeniorLife, Lebanon, Ohio

Jill Wilson also began her career as a CPA, developing a specialty of consulting with senior living providers of all types and helping organizations maximize their financial potential. However, she felt a void in understanding the human side of the work her clients were doing. Otterbein SeniorLife was a client and answered Wilson’s desire by offering her to complete an administrator-in-training internship. She ultimately earned her administrator’s license, all while falling in love with her work at Otterbein. She officially joined the organization in 1997 and has risen in the ranks since, now focusing on the quality of care delivered in her role as president and CEO. A major accomplishment since making her professional transition came 15 years ago, when Otterbein initiated an intense strategic planning initiative that reveled the board’s dissatisfaction with its model for skilled care at the time. In the end, a goal was identified: “to lead the nation in liberating elders and those we serve from the mindset of institutional care.” A small house strategy was implemented to answer that charge, delivering five 10-bed small houses clustered together in residential neighborhoods. That approach has now been used by Otterbein in nine locations throughout Ohio and strives to allow residents to enjoy life in a welcoming environment with home-cooked meals, private suites, and the ability to make decisions about personal care and daily schedules. Identifying the need for—and success of—providing care where people live, Wilson and Otterbein are now embarking on the organization’s newest project, Union Village, which will be a 1,200-acre town center development adjoining its campus in Lebanon, Ohio, using a mixed-use, multigenerational land plan centered on the principles of new urbanism.

Environments for Aging: Tell us about your vision for Union Village, what it took to get it off the ground, and what you hope to achieve through it.
Jill Wilson: Union Village is planned to be a town center anchored at the heart of the Otterbein Lebanon retirement community, linking the two together. This will give our residents easy access to the amenities planned such as restaurants, a performing arts center, and various local retail and service establishments. While Union Village will be a multigenerational community, it will be built to serve the older generation. Our hope is that, eventually, the lines of the retirement community will begin to blur as elders will have easy access and support throughout Union Village.
The area we reside in is in the midst of significant development as the Dayton and Cincinnati markets slowly, but surely, merge together. It’s inevitable that our sought-after farmland will be identified as being ideal for development. With that understanding, and goals to ensure the long-term financial stability and growth of Otterbein and that any development on our land would meet our strict standards, Otterbein set out to establish a for-profit land development company. And for the last several years, we’ve been working toward that goal, and now we expect the first phase will break ground shortly.

The vision is for Union Village to become is multigenerational community to include residential homes, retail businesses, arts and cultural and fitness centers, educational and health care operations, and several parks and town centers—an ideal mix of residential, retail, and services opportunities that conform to the family values important in the Midwest. The land developers we hired, with our blessing, introduced the concept of new urbanism, an urban design movement that promotes walkable neighborhoods containing a range of housing and job types.

Outside of Union Village, you’ve also developed four new locations in the past two years—all small house campuses with skilled nursing beds. How did you push the design team to pursue innovative solutions?
We now have nine neighborhoods located largely in residential areas throughout western and central Ohio. With each new build of the small houses, Perkins Eastman has helped us in identifying and overcoming modest weaknesses, ultimately continually improving on the original design. That said, the Otterbein SeniorLife neighborhoods still include five houses in each neighborhood and 10 private suites in each house, supporting 50 elders per location.

You’re in the process of modernizing and expanding all of SeniorLife communities. What do those plans include and why was it important to you to keep improving/growing?
Your nomination states that you’re “quietly creating major change in our industry.” When you could accept the status quo, why do you continue to push us forward?
It’s important that we continue to push for innovative solutions so that all older persons can live a high quality life and maintain as much choice as possible. To rest on one’s past not only provides competitors the opportunity to catch up, but also invites complacency and when it comes to care for our elders— complacency is unacceptable.

In your own words, what does it mean to champion for appropriate and supportive designs in senior living and what does successful design look like to you?
We believe as children of God, every individual has the right to a lifestyle of their own choosing no matter what type of care and support is needed. To champion new designs in senior living means to provide environments that are created for the individual, allow them as much freedom as possible, and are ultimately conducive to quality of care and holistic growth of those we serve.

The concept of a successful design demands continual improvement. Ultimately, a successful design is one that caters to the needs and desires of those we serve; supports independence and freedom of choice; and provides an atmosphere beneficial to the mental, physical, and spiritual well-being of the residents and staff.