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The LeadingAge PA 2025 Leader of the Year Award winner is Lauren Clark, who is the Executive Director of Community and Home-Based Services at United Church of Christ Homes. She leads by true example every single day, and anyone who works alongside her will tell you she is a “do as I do” type of person.
It is through this leadership by example that a lot of people respect Clark, and it is one of the many reasons why she has received this prestigious award.
“The field of aging services, like many healthcare professions, offers the opportunity to make a significant difference in the lives of people, but senior services allow the development of relationships with seniors and their families that are uniquely special,” Clark said. “As a Gerontological Clinical Nurse Specialist, I bring the understanding that aging is a progressive, irreversible, and ultimately natural process of life.”
The thing about Clark is, she does not beat around the bush. She tells it like it is, and in this field, that is something a lot of people honestly appreciate. She does not sugarcoat anything, but at the same time, she makes sure she puts her residents first.
“In this field, I have the advantage and opportunity to persuade and encourage others to embrace and respect the aging process as we, together, find ways to make life for the people we are privileged to serve as vital, invigorating, and honoring as it can be,” Clark said.
This is one of the more difficult fields to work in, and that is because of the nature of the health of the clientele. And yet, Clark navigates this every day through her approach and with compassion, and she helps people of all different walks and backgrounds live the best lives they can in the community.
She does so through a different approach than the typical senior care facility too. She makes it feel like a true community, and United Church of Christ Homes is all about “aging in place,” allowing seniors to still live their lives while getting the care they need in the process.
“Serving a population with vast life experience and needs and desires that are diverse in characteristics, traits, culture, and background is captivating,” Clark said. “Senior service is fertile ground for a work environment of endless interest, unique challenges, educational opportunities, growth opportunities, deep exploration of the makeup of those with seasoned life experience, and good old-fashioned fun.”
Everyone is different, and Clark and her team embrace that. They love getting to learn about the lives of all their residents, and she really encourages her team to listen and to just be there in any way their residents need them.
“Working in senior care provides the opportunity to encourage others in this field to look for and expect the rich experience awaiting them if they will approach the people we serve as individuals, a spirit of reverence, and a commitment to maintaining the dignity of each person,” Clark said. “Rare is a work environment where people we serve, in many ways, also serve us.”
Not only does Clark help out her residents a lot, but they help her out a lot. She has learned so much from their experiences, and just being able to help those who need it the most at this stage in their lives is consistently eye-opening.
Clark leads a strong team too, and a big reason why they are so strong is because of her. She has worked in senior care for a while now, and she is just very good at helping her staff navigate the ins and outs of working in this field.
She does not do it for the recognition either. While she is now the Leader of the Year Award winner, that is not going to change who Clark is one bit. She does what she does because of her caring and compassionate heart, and that will always trump everything else.
“Though I have not received ‘awards,’ my reward has been to develop and, with others, cultivate the Kindred Place model of senior care as one in which the ideological goal of ‘aging in place’ is an extraordinary reality with an estimated 85 percent or more of the seniors we serve remaining in their home/apartment through the lifespan,” Clark said.
“Rejected is the notion of the need to move to a higher level of care when support needs increase,” Clark also mentioned. “Rather, with the goal of the individual to continue to thrive in their home, we incrementally move services into the home. Said services are offered in increments as small as five minutes with a frequency fitting to the need.”
It is not a hands-off approach, but rather a different type of hands-on approach. United Church of Christ Homes wants these seniors to feel as comfortable as possible, while also ensuring they have the proper care they need to live a continued fruitful life.
“The overarching objective is to keep one in the place they desire to be,” Clark said. “I am beyond thankful to have been given the opportunity to launch this model 20-some years ago, maintain the model, and continue to refine this model of care first established in Kindred Place at Annville and then replicated in Kindred Place at Harrisburg. It has been the professional satisfaction and pleasure of a lifetime.”
Clark is changing the notion of senior care communities, and she is helping a lot of seniors who might otherwise deny these types of services. The facility she leads is not the atypical one, but it is one that is making a difference, and it is because of her leadership and her stewardship that she and her community can make such a difference.
