Title Dementia Program Coordinator Company Schlegel Villages Bio Heather currently serves as the Dementia Program Coordinator for Schlegel Villages and is focused on working collaboratively with the Villages, Residents, Care Partners and Dementia Program Advisory Committee to explore and develop practices to honour and support persons living with dementia. Prior to this, she provided leadership to the Recreation team at The Village of Wentworth Heights in Hamilton, looking for creative ways to put living first for each resident. By utilizing a resident directed approach to leisure programming her team has embraced alternative ways to engage residents as they pursue the leisure and life choices that bring them joy and meaning. She shares her enthusiasm as a team educator, building on her prior experience as a teacher at Sheridan College where she developed curriculum for a Recreation course in the Social Service Worker Gerontology program and subsequently engaged students in an interactive classroom setting. Heather has had the opportunity to share some of these new approaches at the “Walk With Me Conference” in 2014, and the Pioneer Network Conference in 2014 and 2015, and more recently at the Culture Change Exchange in 2016. It has been Heather’s passion to support residents, care partners and team members through teaching about the experience of Living with Dementia and how we can join together to journey alongside to promote the well-being of all.