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Using Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation to Improve the Lives of All Seniors

Episode #51

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. 

Martin Luther King 

More information can be found at www.socialchangeleaders.net

How can a large organization use social entrepreneurial principles in its everyday work? How can social innovation and human centered design be integrated into the work done to solve big community challenges?  Listen to this dynamic conversation about how these important principles are used by AARP Foundation as they address challenges faced by today’s seniors living in the United States.   In today’s episode, we talk with Lisa Marsh Ryerson, the president of AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) Foundation, the charitable affiliate of AARP. Since she took the helm, AARP Foundation has developed pioneering initiatives, explored new avenues for collaboration, and secured unprecedented funding to support programs and services that truly change lives.  In our conversation we:

  • Hear about the history, mission and especially the big, bold vision of the AARP Foundation  
  • Learn about the innovative partnerships AARP is developing to advance solutions that help vulnerable older adults increase their economic opportunity and social connectedness.
  • Discuss the shared challenge of ending senior poverty and how there are 37 million individuals 50 and older already living in poverty or one life event away from living in poverty 
  • Understand how poverty is not due to an individual failing and requires a multidisciplinary approach to solving it that includes new and bold solutions to issues like housing, jobs, wages, food security, social connection / social isolation
  • Discuss the growing public health issue of social isolation
  • Hear Lisa describe how physical distancing due to COVID-19 cannot become social disconnection and how the AARP team has brought in social entrepreneurs to use lean startup and human-centered design to address social isolation with chatbots and other innovations  
  • Address the myth that when older adults retire they will have income to support their life, when in fact retired adults often need skills and tools to generate income into their older age
  • Learn how the entire AARP organization uses innovation including an Innovation Lab that looks for start-up companies at various stages that are driving social impact tools
  • Understand how AARP supports various social innovators through in-kind support and how it launched a program using AR (Augmented Reality) so families and individuals can remain connected with each other
  • Hear about what Lisa has learned about how to do innovation well which includes following the process of innovation and lean startup to inform an approach, make good choices,  solve problems and drive grants. On any given day, we can fall in love with a great idea in search of a problem.  It is important to look at the root problem and test idea
  • Discuss how human-centered design is critical when working with vulnerable and low income population because of ageism, structural racism and inequality.  This holds organizations like AARP accountable to work in an inclusive way. 
  • Learn about AARP’s practice that no idea makes it into the room unless it has a minimum of 50 conversations, inputs or insights from the people the idea (or solution) is intending to serve
  • Discover how AARP Foundation understands their role, their own strengths and assets and how they use good strategy along with collaboration and partnerships in their work
  • Find out about the largest, free, volunteer driven tax assistance service with 36,000 volunteers that serve millions people per year on tax assistance and various other programs that support savings as a way to prepare for retirement

In this episode we reference: 

AARP Foundation https://www.aarp.org/aarp-foundation/

More about Lisa Marsh Ryerson:

Lisa Marsh Ryerson is president of AARP Foundation, the charitable affiliate of AARP. A bold, disciplined and collaborative leader, she sets the Foundation’s strategic direction and steers its efforts to realize an audacious vision: a country free of poverty, where no older person feels vulnerable. Since she took the helm, AARP Foundation has developed pioneering initiatives, explored new avenues for collaboration, and secured unprecedented funding to support programs and services that truly change lives. Ms. Ryerson has spearheaded innovative partnerships with other organizations to create and advance effective solutions that help vulnerable older adults increase their economic opportunity and social connectedness.

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