Stories From Real Working CaregiverS
Actual working caregivers share their stories.
Katie MacDonald
Katie MacDonald, March 25th, 2025
Katie MacDonald is a dedicated professional with experience in municipal services, education, and non-profit community engagement. She holds a Master of Education in Change Management and is currently pursuing a certificate in Adult Education.
As a caregiver to her brother and mother, Katie understands the challenges faced by sibling, young, and working caregivers. Her personal experiences drive her advocacy for meaningful support and resources.
Passionate about disability rights, she contributes her expertise to non-profit boards, working to create lasting change. Guided by empathy and resilience, Katie is committed to ensuring caregivers and individuals with disabilities receive the recognition and support they need. Click her for her LinkedIn.
Zack: Thank you for joining us, Katie. Please introduce yourself and tell us about your caregiver journey.
Katie: I'm Katie MacDonald. I am from Ontario. I have been a caregiver for what I would consider my whole life, but I really didn't know that until, my thirties…. My middle brother, Neil, is a gentleman with Down syndrome…. Whatever we did my brother was always part of it. I think that's probably why I didn't really realize that I [was] a caregiver until I started getting to a place in my life where I was starting to make big decisions. It was like, where am I going to go to university?... Where am I going to locate for work?... And I realized that I felt a little lost because I had this sense of something pulling me back to… where my family was. And I thought to myself, surely, I am not the only person in the world who has ever gone through this.
You know we were speaking earlier, Selma, you said just knowing you're not alone is so powerful, right? At that point I realized there had to be other sibling caregivers who went through these different chapters in their life as well and found ways to navigate and ways to identify their own values where they needed to go in life… but it didn't mean that they couldn't also be a brother, a sister, and a caregiver. It was at that time that I reached out to what is now called Siblings Canada… part of the Canadian Center for Caregiving Excellence. And they had just done a national survey of sibling caregivers, and they were doing a little bit of a podcast review.
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Todd “TJ” Keitz
Todd “TJ” Keitz, March 11th, 2025
Todd Keitz has been a lifelong social good evangelist – and caregiver! He has woven community engagement and social impact into his life since he was a teenager volunteering in senior living centers, and started caregiving at the age of 9 when an ill uncle came to live with his family. In 2018, he relocated to Florida to become primary caregiver and patient advocate for his mom and dad – each with life threatening diseases. During those experiences, Todd saw first-hand the many challenges all caregivers and patient advocates face. That led him to create My Care Friends, a unique website for caregivers and patient advocates to connect and support each other. Additionally, Todd currently serves on the National Advisory Council of the American Association of Caregiving Youth, which brings greater awareness to the needs of over 5.4 million caregiving youth in the U.S. He also sits on the board of SayAh! - a NYC-based nonprofit focused on improving health literacy across the U.S. In addition to all of this, he somehow finds time to help people and employers in many industries as Founder/CEO of 17 Commerce, which leads the U.S. Business Unit of Magic Horizons’ scientifically-based VR for Relaxation. Through this role, Todd works with customers such as Mayo Clinic on improving staff wellbeing, U.S. Veterans Administration to ease Veterans’ stress and anxiety, and other organizations to enhance mental and overall health.
Todd and My Care Friends is launching their newest series of programs, called Hope in Aging and Dementia. The series will kick off on March 24th at the University of Denver, with a LIVE in-person screening of the film Keys Bags Names Words: Hope in Aging and Dementia - a film made possible by The Global Brain Health Institute. You can get tickets here. Here is the trailer. Zack: Todd, thank you so much for being here with us today. We really appreciate it. You have an incredible caregiver journey with many family members. So please, if you could tell us about your journey, and also share how that impacted trying to hold a job at the same time.
Todd: It's nice to be here, Zack and Selma. Thank you so much for having me… I never looked at my journey where it started until I started getting involved in the MyCareFriends stuff, which we'll talk about… But upon further reflection, I realized it really started when I was a kid.
When I was eight, nine, 10 years old, I had an uncle who came to live with us for a year. He had colitis, and he… had a colostomy. And so as a little kid, I was one of those who was helping change the bag and so forth. So that's really where it started… And then later on, it was my sister who was in a very serious car accident, who was in a coma for a couple weeks. We didn't know if she was going to live. I was living in Boston at the time. My parents were in the Philadelphia area. My sister had the accident in DC… I ended up going down there and being the caregiver advocate, talking with nurses, physicians, everybody, insurance companies. And so that went on for years. In fact, that had me move back to Philadelphia. I chose to move back to help with her recovery…. And then after that, my grandparents toward the end of their lives… helping my mom out who was very involved with them.
Then fast forward… 15 years later after my last grandparent died, then my mom got sick. I was living in California, came for a visit here in Florida… within three weeks, her hemoglobin went from 12 to five. She wasn't going to live perhaps another 24 hours. This was my first vivid memory of advocacy… we were in a local community hospital, and she needed a transfusion. She wasn't going to make it…. they're telling us “You come back in two days”… I said, “How do we get her care right now? How do we get the transfusion?”…
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Susanne White
Susanne White 2/25/25
Susanne White is the Founder of Caregiver Warrior. When Susanne was faced with the opportunity to care for her parents, she ventured out on a caregiving journey that would change her life. She blogs about this journey on her website, caregiverwarrior.com, and shares her experience, strength, and hope with others so that they too may navigate caregiving with grace and empowerment. Known for her unique, authentic style and wisdom from the inside of many caregiving journeys, she is an outstanding motivational keynote speaker, bestselling author, gifted writer, exceptional ERG webinar host, and thought leader in the caregiver advocacy community. White’s latest book, Self-Care for Caregivers: A Practical Guide to Caring for You While You Care for Your Loved One, is now available at your favorite bookstores. Be sure to check out the audio version of the book which is perfect for busy caregivers on the go. Visit caregiverwarrior.com for more information, and follow Susanne on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.Zack: Let's start off with your caregiver journey. I know you have an incredible caregiver journey, and you’re actually kind of like me. I got drafted involuntarily into the role by complete surprise. So tell us about your caregiver journey.
Susanne: I love that you were drafted. My dad would love that terminology because… he was drafted. He was in World War II. He got so excited to go to a war that he locked the key to his trunk in his trunk at college, because he was so excited to get going. So he would love the draft.
My caregiving journey started with a phone call. My sister lived in Florida and I'm a Jersey girl. My parents lived in South Jersey, and I was working in New York City. And they were getting older … and we flew them down to my sister, she entertained us for the holidays every year since my mom and dad were getting a little bit older. They had flown down ahead of me. And I got a phone call from my sister, she kept calling me, and I was like, why is she calling me?
I picked the phone up and she said that dad is in urgent care. They had to take him off the aircraft because he was so exhausted and sick, and he couldn't walk … This was our stoic, six foot tall, World War II bombardier, hero dad, who was actually shot down on a 69th mission … and landed the plane. Anyway, the bottom line of it was they [my parents] met after my mom had lost her fiance in war maneuvers, and my dad was injured… so they kind of met and bonded. My mom always said they sort of fell in love around their grief… They were working really hard together, to keep from my sister and me that my mom had the beginning stages of dementia, probably. And that my dad's heart… preliminary issues that weren't too serious at the time, were escalating and he was burned out.
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Kim Andrews
Kim Andrews 1/28/25
Kim Andrews is an accomplished Leadership and Career Transition Coach & Strategist, and founder of Envision Career Design. With decades of experience in human resources, career management, and executive coaching, she empowers professionals to navigate career transitions and leadership challenges with clarity and confidence. Kim’s collaborative and honest coaching style, combined with her industry expertise, inspires clients to achieve measurable results and personal growth. She is also the co-author of the book: “Taking the Leap: From Employee or Executive to Female Founder”, an Amazon Best Seller, sharing insights on making bold, purposeful transitions.
Selma: Can you talk to us, about the journey you had with your dad up until he passed away, and then now with your mom?
Kim: Happy to. But first, I want to thank both of you, Selma and Zack, for inviting me, because this really has been a journey … you hear about other people. It's a journey about caregiving, and then suddenly you wake up going, I'm going through this!
…My dad, was pretty ornery. I say that because we didn't know what was going on with him. We just didn't know what we didn't know. And when we found out that he had to have his leg amputated, it took us back. He was just putting Vaseline on his legs, and we had no idea. He always stayed in his room. Just all kinds of signs. I was in HR. Zack, you're familiar with HR, how HR can be. And I was a senior leader and it's hard to get away when you have responsibilities in the way that you do … manager, director, VP. So, I realized that I had to decide. I was ready to leave HR … I decided that for me to really start looking after my parents, I would have to leave corporate, and I'd start my own business. I wanted to do that anyway. So that was the beginning of the journey.
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Mike George
Mike George 1/14/25
Mike George helps families rewrite their caregiving story – from one of sacrifice and exhaustion to one of joy, strength and resilience. A family caregiver himself for 3 decades, Mike intimately understands the burdens of supporting the primary care of a loved one. But he also knows the tremendous fulfillment it can bring. This lived experience led him to create The Soaring Families Way TM , a proven method that can be every family’s reliable companion on their journey to joy. He is a speaker, author, and co-founder of Soaring Families whose mission is to redefine caregiving for families.
Zack: Tell us a little bit about your caregiver journey. How did it start and how is it today?
Mike: It was nothing that was planned as in most cases. I'm a parent of three adult children, and our youngest, Ben, he's 32, was born with complex care needs from day one. From the moment of his birth, we knew that things were going to be, not a typical child rearing journey. And the biggest thing for us in those days was that nobody could really give us any guidance on how we would manage a lot of this.
The neonatologist after Ben was born, basically said that we had a very sick baby. He had enlarged liver and spleen. His blood platelet count was too low, and he may not live the day. It was all a run on sentence. And when you hear the statement of, “he may not live the day,” that's all you hear. You don't hear anything else after that. And, basically, it was trying to determine what went wrong, for lack of a better term, and understand the diagnosis and understand what that meant long term.
But about day four, the pediatric neurologist summarized it, and I can still hear him saying that. Although I'll say that he was a great support to us. But he said, after our first meeting, that Ben may never walk, talk, or go to school because of all the implications of the virus that he was born with and the lack of normal development neurologically. And that was kind of a nightmare from then on. And it became more of trying to understand how you keep Ben stabilized. You know, any normative pathways of life that you would follow as a parent of a young child. There was none of that. It was more of how you keep him alive and how do we keep ourselves from spiraling downward….it was a journey that had no guidepost and really had no one to help us along the way.
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Laurette Foggini
Laurette Foggini 12/17/24
Laurette Foggini is is an Elder Care Professional and Consultant, a Long-Distance Caregiver, an Aging and Self-Care Enthusiast, as well as an Author focusing on Caring and Caregiving. She possess a deep understanding of the challenges, costs, and strategies required for caregiving success. Additionally, she is an author of three children's books centered around the theme of caregiving. She brings 18 years of professional and personal caregiving expertise to her work guiding more than 500 families through the complexities of aging, dementia care, and end-of life support. Her expertise includes dementia care, end-of-life support, and collaboration with professionals across the care continuum. Her experiences living in Europe and Asia shape her inclusive and empathetic approach, while her endless energy shines through her work with The Hummingbird Project, where she designs activities to bring joy and purpose to aging adults. Based in San Francisco, Laurette blends her professional passion with a love for hiking, founding the women-led adventure club Adventure Gals SF, and sharing stories through her social media. You can learn more about her on her website.
Zack: Tell us a little bit about your story. When did you first become that long distance caregiver? Tell us a little bit about that and about your parents.
Laurette: I started in the field in home care like you, Zack. I was approached by a neighbor who bought a franchise. She said: “You should be working for me. This is totally up your alley.” And I replied: “I don't understand what this is.” I didn't even know it was an industry because I volunteered with seniors for years with my son when he was small. We would do this visiting grandparent, program for low-income seniors that were isolated. I didn't even realize there was a paying position in that. I did that for about… 12 or so years before my parents even needed help. Just working with families one on one, meeting with them, understanding what their situation was, and then either recommending home care or other options.
When it hit for my parents, I was like, I got this. I know all about this. But, of course, when it's your family, you don't got nothing. You got a big headache is what you got because you think you know everything and obviously you don't. And it's a different dynamic. So, that started with my father as he aged. We saw the memory loss. We saw the resistance to giving up his license.
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Elyse Weber-Sacks
Elyse Weber-Sacks 12/2/24
Elyse Weber-Sacks, President, Connie Rosenberg & Assoc. Care Management, Inc. is an Aging Life Care® Professional and licensed social worker in NY & NJ. She leads a group of professionals with extensive experience in health care and the aging process, offering comprehensive independent assessments, advocacy, crisis intervention care coordination and planning to assist families in navigating the aging journey. Elyse has been on the National Board of Directors of the Aging Life Care® Association since 2020.
Zack: Can you tell us a little bit about your story?
Elyse: I was going to ask you how you're defining caregiver, because… I think of caregiver in one way based on the work I do, and I think you may be defining it differently. But in terms of my story okay. So, I have an MSW. I went directly from college undergrad to graduate school, and… my longer-range plan was to eventually become a psychotherapist and use the MSW as sort of a steppingstone for that…. I worked in medical social work for a bit after I got my master's and then… I started second guessing my decision about social work as a profession and wanted to try something else…. I ended up going into business... and then largely due to some issues with my kids or my son in particular, I needed to get off that track, because it just wasn't working for me as a working mom.
So, I took my social work background, and my now extensive business experience, and I married the two…. I always loved older people…. My grandparents lived across the street from me. I saw them almost every day of my life…. So, I took both of those backgrounds [social work and business], and I kind of married them and went into geriatrics…. I worked for a large regional chain of nursing homes and did some things for them with marketing, and then I worked in hospice doing physician education…. Then I heard about geriatric care management.
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Consuela Marshall
Consuela Marshall 11/18/24
Consuela Marshall is a Caregiver Coach and Consultant and started Finding A Foothold, an aging and caregiving consultation service. She is also author of the book Fall Prevention: Planning Not To Fall. She has over 29 years of experience as an Occupational Therapist (OT) providing care to individuals with disabilities and disorders or have sustained injuries which negatively affect their level of independence with self-care, mobility and ADL (Activities of Daily Living) tasks. She is a graduate of Louisiana State University Medical Center and has worked on Skilled Nursing Units, Inpatient Rehab Units and home health setting. She is also a Fall Prevention Specialist, Certified Aging In Place Specialist, Certified Dementia Practitioner, Certified Geriatric Care Professional and a former Board member of the Louisiana Assisted Living Association. In addition to her professional experience as an Occupational Therapist is the wealth of knowledge and learning gained from direct hands-on experience as primary caregiver to her mother who had several strokes, to an “aunt” who had Alzheimer’s and to a daughter born with a congenital birth defect. She also owned and operated a 6 bed personal care home for the elderly.
Zack: Tell us a little about yourself and what you do?
Consuela: By profession, I am an occupational therapist. I've been working as an occupational therapist for 30 years. For the majority of my professional career, I have been in the role of a home health therapist, which means I enter the homes of those who are returning from a hospital stay or even a doctor's visit where it has been identified that there are some weaknesses and that person has lost the ability to take care of themself or is having mobility issues. I've done this for 25 years and I love it because I get to see people in their natural environment and... get the real story of what's going on in their lives. And I can now say that initially, in that role, I was very narrow-minded....I had a limited view of the aspect of caregiving....I was missing something for several years as a therapist, a component you can only know after you’ve been in a caregiving role. I gained a much broader perspective of the challenges that caregivers face when I became the caregiver to my mom. But... step back further than that, the reason why I became an occupational therapist is I had a daughter born with physical limitations.... The caregiver term never even entered my mind back in the beginning stages of her care. I was just a wife, a mom who had just had her second child and just seeing the whole world ahead of me and my husband, and we having all these great plans for life together. And then my daughter comes along.... It was not the scenario that we had hoped for, but it thrust me into the role of being a mom of a child with a disability, never realizing I was a caregiver.
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Dan Schlein
Dan Schlein, 11/5/24
Dan Schlein is an experienced civil litigator and labor and employment law specialist. He has extensive experience representing both public and private sector clients as well as providing training in employment law and designing complaint processes. In addition to his own practice, he also served as Of Counsel to the firm of Adams, Gutierrez and Lattiboudere in Newark, New Jersey, where he assisted in the representation of public entities. Dan regularly prepared briefs and motions in matters pending before state, federal and administrative courts and participated in all phases of civil litigation, including appellate proceedings. Dan was also an Assistant Director with the pharmaceutical company Pfizer in Manhattan, where he worked as a dispute resolution and employment law specialist. In his current role, Dan helps oversee programs to reduce risks posed by third-party service providers for a bank in New York City.
Dan earned his law degree from George Washington University and holds a Master’s degree in Politics from the University of Oxford. He obtained his undergraduate degree with honors and departmental high distinction in an interdisciplinary program in social studies from Wesleyan University. Dan also holds an advanced certificate in alternative dispute resolution from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He is a member of the bars of New York, New Jersey, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the Federal District Court for the District of New Jersey and the Federal District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.
Selma: Thank you, Dan, for being part of our interview of real working caregivers and sharing your story. So, let's start by hearing how you came to be a caregiver for your dad.
Dan: Well, it started many years ago. As a longstanding resident of New York City, I would frequently visit my parents in New Jersey. And because they're depression era, they would never spend much of anything on themselves. So, I would do it for them. I would bring them all sorts of great stuff, foods I knew they liked or things they'd like to read. And then they would chide me for being a spendthrift, and then enjoy it. And we'd repeat the cycle every couple of weeks.
I lost my mom about 15 years ago, due to ALS, which was a very difficult time. So, I’m a caregiver twice over. I have continued to support my dad who has been pretty self-sufficient all these years. Then the pandemic hit, and I found that I was spending more time helping him out because he was naturally afraid to go out in public, even to the supermarket. So, I became the guy who was doing all his stuff, all his errands, anything he needed to do. He’s 94 now and doesn’t use the internet much. Same for his laptop computer or an iPhone I bought him. I try to make sure he gets exercise, though, through visits to local arboretums or state parks. I purchased some home exercise equipment, too, that he can use when the weather might make walking outside difficult or hazardous.
Former Wisconsin Governor Martin J. Schreiber
Former Wisconsin Governor Martin J. Schreiber 10/22/24
Former Wisconsin Governor Martin J. Schreiber is a dedicated and out-spoken advocate on Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and caregiving. He shares his caregiving experiences as a caregiver to his wife and high school sweetheart, Elaine, at events nationwide, offering humor, compassion and words of wisdom. His book, My Two Elaines: Learning, Coping, and Surviving as an Alzheimer’s Caregiver, has received widespread praise from the caregiving community and listed among Caregiving.com’s “best caregiver books.” His extensive public service includes roles as the youngest member of the state senate, lieutenant governor, and 39th governor of Wisconsin. A native of Milwaukee, Marty and Elaine raised four children and have thirteen grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He also helped Wisconsin Department of Health Services create a Dementia Friendly Employer’s Toolkit.
Selma: I just wondered if you could share just a little bit about your story with our potential readers who may not be familiar with it.
Governor Schreiber: Well, thank you. Well, first of all, my pleasure and honor to be with you. I thank you for that. So, Elaine and I met when we were freshmen in high school back in 1957, long time ago. But, anyway, we sat next to each other in Latin class, and gosh, I fell in love with her right away. And so we dated. We went steady. We got engaged -- 4 children and thirteen grandchildren, my friend, my adviser, my partner, my companion, everything you could ever want in a life's partner.
I was very much involved in politics and in running for elective office. When I would run, she'd be the hardest working campaigner. And if I would lose, she would never let me feel defeated. I think that's really the key cornerstone as it relates to what I most remember … was the impact that Elaine had on me. And that is, we may lose, but we can never allow ourselves to feel defeated. So, she ingrained that in me. Maybe not as strong as if she would have liked, but a little bit.
But then what happened is, when she was in her mid-sixties, she began to get lost going to and from places she was going to and from for the last 10 years … She would come up with stories about what happened, and it never occurred. She was a great cook and sometimes messed up … her recipes so much that she would cry. So that was the beginning of the second Elaine. And now when I think back … from diagnosis till the time she passed away two years ago, it was roughly 18 years.
Christina Keys
Christina Keys 10/8/24
Christina Keys went from career woman to caregiver when her mother had a life changing stroke in 2013. She cared for her for 10 years. Turning a mess into a message, she is now a National Speaker and Advocate as well as the Founder and CEO of Keys For Caregiving where she is connecting businesses and Family Caregivers to collectively transform the Care Space community and amplify our voices for change. Ways to reach Christina: National Text Line: 360-230-7736 Linkedin FB: Keys For Caregiving YouTube TikTok: @keysforcaregiving
Zack & Selma: Tell us a little about yourself.
Christina: I was a career woman, and I worked really hard for 20 years to build myself up in the tech industry. And in 2013, my mother had a stroke, and I became a family caregiver. I stayed at my job until 2017, and then I had to leave because working 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, business to business was not conducive to caregiving…. I wound up having to take 5 part time jobs…. One of the part time jobs I got was working in the retirement and senior industry…. My job was to build referral partner relationships…. Then I created a…hyperlocal nonprofit that was really a collective of resources… and then I started advocating, for family caregivers, and speaking nationally. One thing led to another and Caregiving.com picked me up to duplicate the model of my nonprofit across the United States.
…I was doing a lot of advocacy work, with people like Caring Across Generations…I was doing a lot of speaking…and my care journey for my mother lasted ten years. And then…my partner…had a stroke. And I became his caregiver. Then 2022, my dad died…then my mother passed away. And I thought my caregiving journey was over, but little did I realize the caregiver recovery piece just started…. So, now I go all over the United States and speak…on family caregiving, on caregiver recovery, on how broken our health care system is, how employers need to work better with their employees that are caregiving…. I help businesses who work with family caregivers to really make a bigger impact with those family caregivers and what they're doing with them. Because I feel like a lot of people know how to work with disabled folks and seniors. They know how to market to them, but we're so invisible as family caregivers. They really don't know how to reach us. They really don't know how to talk to us.
Suzanne Blackenship
Renee Fry
Suzanne Blankenship 9/24/24
Suzanne Asaff Blankenship earned her badge in eldercare the hard way – by doing it. She is in her third decade of caring for and sharing the care for her elders. During this time, Suzanne has found advocacy and elder-centric service a rare commodity for our seniors. Her guidance helps family members navigate more easily through the eldercare journey and advocate effectively for their elders. Suzanne brings some sanity to an otherwise randomly arriving responsibility, easing the load with her tongue-in-cheek humor. She is the author of the award-winning book How To Take Care of Old People Without Losing Your Marbles. Simply put, Suzanne makes eldercare easier. She was also highlighted in an EBN article 4/22 that you can find here .
Selma: So, maybe the place to start is you talk a little bit about when you realized that you were a working caregiver. When did you realize during this whole process that you were a working caregiver?
Suzanne: Well, I was working, for a corporation based in Albuquerque, and my mother was in Dallas. And she had just been diagnosed, with breast cancer … they wanted to do some surgery. And I have a brother … he lives in Dallas and … my brother is wonderful…. We've made a good care team. But early on … my mom reached out to me and said, “Will you come for the surgery?” And I realized it's not just … you go in for a doctor's appointment and you come out…. My mom can't really just take herself home from this. I need to stay a few days and make sure she's okay. And then the follow-ups of going to the oncologist…. All of those kind of things. I helped her with questions to ask and it was really funny, later on in my caregiving journey, I would make a list of what my mother needed to ask at the doctor's office.
Renee Fry 9/12/24
Renee Fry is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gentreo, an online platform offering affordable, state-specific estate planning tools for families. Previously, she led sustainability and healthcare tech startups, and spearheaded new business initiatives at Philips Lighting North America. Renee also held key roles in the Massachusetts government, serving in and overseeing Gov. Mitt Romney's cabinet. Renee is a graduate of Penn State and has an MBA from the Harvard Business School and is recognized as a Rock 100 Entrepreneur. She was also highlighted in an EBN article 4/22 that you can find here .
Selma: In the EBN article “ ‘I was just a daughter and a mother’: Sandwich caregivers struggle to manage it all” you had some really thought provoking comments. The first of which I wanted to touch base on is the comment about when you identified yourself. You labeled yourself as “a CEO, a founder, and a caregiver.” And that really struck me. I just wanted to know why you felt it was important to include a “caregiver” in your self description.
Renee: Oh, thank you. And to all the caregivers out there, I think they'll probably understand why. Because it's such a huge part of your life, right? So whether it's your child or in our case, and this is where the sandwich part comes in, helping care for our father who had developed Alzheimer's, it really becomes almost a full time job…