Kim McRae

Kim McRae is a consultant, speaker, educator, and advocate. Kim is also an Educator and Mentor for The Eden Alternative®. Through her company, Have a Good Life, she works with organizations and companies as a thought leader, change agent and subject matter expert on caregiving, culture change, person directed-care, and person-centered dementia care. She is also the founder of About Face Technologies, which is focused on simple and intuitive assistive technology products for those needing simplicity. Kim is the inventor of and holds five US and one UK patents.

Kim comes to person-centered care and culture change through a twelve-year history as a family caregiver and a consumer of aging services and long-term care. Experiencing firsthand the system as it is with four parents/in-laws, and wanting better for her mother, who had young-onset Lewy Body dementia and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, she has been studying long-term care, person-centered dementia care, and how to improve quality of life for elders and their care partners for more than twenty years.

Kim is nationally known as a vigilant advocate for people who are living with dementia and family caregivers (“consumers”). She champions humanizing dementia care, person-centered living, family-centered care and culture change throughout the entire spectrum and continuum of life-long living and long-term care. Her work has been featured in the book Culture Change in Elder Care, in Atlanta Magazine, and in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and she has received numerous awards. Kim has presented extensively on these topics throughout the country to all levels of stakeholders.

Since 2006, Kim has been involved with the Pioneer Network, the national organization advancing “culture change.” Kim co-founded the Culture Change Network of Georgia (CCNG) in 2008 and is currently serving as a Co-Convener and on the Steering Committee. She is currently a consultant on the A Trauma Informed Approach to Improving Dementia Care in Georgia Nursing Homes grant and was a consultant on the Building Resources for Delivering Person-Centered Care in Georgia Nursing Homes grant, both in partnership with CCNG and Georgia State University’s Gerontology Institute.

She was a member of the Founding Board of Directors for the national Dementia Action Alliance (DAA) which held the first North American “Re-Imagine Life with Dementia” Conference.

She was an Advisor to the Georgia Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias (GARD) State Plan Task Force and is actively involved in GARD workgroups. In addition, she is contributing to numerous boards, task forces and committees focused on developing programs, providing education, and advocating for changes that will improve the lives of elders and those that care about them.

Prior to being a family caregiver, Kim was an integrated marketing professional with over fourteen years of experience in consumer marketing, public relations, promotion, and advertising; brand management, corporate identity and image building; cause-related marketing and coalition building; strategic planning; product development, licensing, and packaging. She graduated from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. in Journalism/Advertising from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, with a concentration in French. She has worked extensively with start-up organizations, as well as companies including: The Coca-Cola Company, The Wm. Wrigley, Jr. Company, Healthtex , and Porcher Textiles of Lyon, France. French spoken and understood proficiently.