Members/Partners

Member Profiles


Lori Phillippo

Name: Lory L. Phillippo

Title: Chief Executive Officer

Company/Organization: Circle Center Adult Day Services

ODP Member Since: October 2009

ODP Committee Affiliation: Health & Long-term Care

Summarize your professional background relevant to Age Wave preparedness.

  • CEO of licensed, Medicaid-certified non-profit serving nursing home eligible community-living older adults for 29 years; extensive experience in all aspects of agency visioning, mission, branding, leadership and day-to-day management
  • Licensed Occupational Therapist (Virginia Board of Medicine); National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy for 40 years 
  • Clinical assistant professor, VCU Department of Occupational Therapy; formerly full and part -time faculty there and at University of Illinois-Medical Center Campus-Chicago
  • Masters in Public Health (MPH) in health gerontology  (University of Michigan) and post-graduate certificate in gerontology (U/Michigan and Wayne State University); solid foundation in population-wide issues and approaches
  • Clinical expertise:  functional assessment; dementia care; therapeutic environments/adaptation; family caregiver issues; multidisciplinary team approach in health care setting
  • Other management expertise:  facility and services planning; capital and operating fund development including grantsmanship; non-profit Boards; design and implementation of innovative programs for older adults; budgeting

What expertise or other strengths do you bring to the Older Dominion Partnership?

  • Excellent public speaker and writer
  • Sense of humor
  • Eagerness to do more (even after 40 years!)
  • Organizing and leading
  • Have both a micro (occupational therapists focus in the most minute details of individual human performance) and macro (public health view on populations and systems) perspective on needs, issues, solutions

What do you believe are the most pressing issues in Age Wave-preparedness in Virginia today?

  • Lack of funding to maintain, much less grow programs, services, resources at a point when we need to start making changes; the age wave is starting now, not a decade from now
  • Continuing inertia in many sectors outside of human/health services
  • Intergenerational competition for scarce resources; need broader education that what we don’t do to support future cohorts of older adults will jeopardize young people
  • Continuing to find the most efficient ways to serve the diversity of older folks well , combined with continuing push down of acuity to quality congregate community-based programs

What advice do you have for age wave planning in Virginia?

  • Focus on developing  spokespeople who can lead public opinion (people outside the  predictable “older adult choir”) including more younger people
  • Eager to learn what other states are doing; any lessons there?
  • Should we all re-read the Tipping Point; re: what does it takes to make a difference?