Kim McRae
Culture Change Network of Georgia
Kim McRae, FCTA is a consultant, speaker, educator, and advocate. She is also an Educator and Mentor for The Eden Alternative®. Through her company, Have a Good Life, Kim works with organizations as a thought leader, change agent and subject matter expert on caregiving, culture change, person-directed living, 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.
As a FCTA (Family Caregiver Turned Advocate), Kim comes to person-directed living and person-centered dementia care through a 12-year history as a family caregiver. 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. Prior to becoming a family caregiver, she was an integrated marketing professional for over fourteen years.
Since 2006, Kim has been involved with Pioneer Network, the national organization advancing the "culture change movement" to improve quality of care and quality of life for elders throughout aging services, long-term care, and the entire healthcare ecosystem. In 2008, she co-founded the Culture Change Network of Georgia whose mission is, "Changing the way we think and feel about aging and disability by creating the kind of care and support we want for our loved ones and ourselves."
Kim is contributing to numerous boards, task forces and committees focused on developing programs, providing education, and advocating for changes that will improve the quality of life for elders, their care partners, and those that care about them. She was one 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, and has been actively involved in the Georgia Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias (GARD) State Plan Task Force since 2013. She is also serving as a member on the Milken Institute's Alliance to Improve Dementia Care, the Moving Forward: Nursing Home Quality Coalition, and the Rosalynn Carter Institute For Caregiver’s 4Kinds Caregiver Network.
She is currently a consultant on the $1.5 million CMP grant, A Trauma-Informed Approach to Improving Dementia Care in Georgia Nursing Homes and was a consultant on the $1.6 million CMP grant, Building Resources for Delivering Person-Centered Care in Georgia Nursing Homes. Both are a partnership between the Culture Change Network of Georgia and the Gerontology Institute at Georgia State University.
Her work has been featured in the book Culture Change in Elder Care, in Atlanta Magazine, and in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Kim has presented extensively throughout the country to all levels of stakeholders and has received numerous awards.
