Keynote Speaker
M.T. Connolly is an elder justice pioneer, researcher, lawyer, nonprofit leader, and MacArthur “genius” grant awardee who works to make aging more joyful, gentle, and just. Her book, The Measure of Our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money, and Meaning Later in Life is a sweeping and intimate portrait of the elder justice movement in which she maps aging in new ways -- revealing its practical challenges, fragmented systems, and promising innovations, while also showing how connection, purpose, and awe can protect and enrich us as we age. Previously, MT was an architect of the Elder Justice Act, founder of the Department of Justice’s Elder Justice Initiative, and lead author of the Elder Justice Roadmap, shaping research, policy, and practice for decades. That work and her book research led MT to co-design the RISE model, a more holistic, person-centered, and restorative approach to reducing elder abuse. Pilot data from Maine found that RISE reduced re-referrals to APS by 50% and was positively reviewed by clients, APS workers, and RISE advocates alike. Those findings led policymakers, in 2023, to enact RISE as a permanent (funded) healthy aging program under Maine law. The RISE team also has formed a free-standing RISE program in Ontario, Canada (which has no APS) and worked with elder abuse prosecutors, and drug court in a Seattle pilot, to allow a defendant who exploited and mistreated his grandmother to receive drug treatment in lieu of incarceration. To further innovate, test, and scale new solutions, the RISE team formed the nonprofit RISE Collaborative of which MT is the president. In 2024 the RISE Collaborative received a $3.6 million 3-year ACL grant to replicate RISE in three new locations and was selected by the World Health Organization from among 89 promising international elder mistreatment interventions, as one of seven to replicate and study.