The Future of Community: Looking Beyond the Walls of Senior Living with Rob Liebreich

The Future of Community: Looking Beyond the Walls of Senior Living with Rob Liebreich, President and CEO of Goodwin Living

How much could change if we saw senior living not only as a place of care, but as a community with something to give? There is so much life inside senior living. Wisdom. Experience. People who still want to learn, contribute, mentor, create, and be needed. And there are families, young people, caregivers, and neighbors outside those walls who need connection too. What if we brought those worlds closer together?

My guest today is Rob Liebreich, President and CEO of Goodwin Living. Rob’s own path into this work began with his grandmother and a desire to replace some of the fear and anxiety around aging with hope and purpose. That personal experience has stayed with him throughout his career and shaped how he thinks about what it means to create community—not only for the people Goodwin Living serves, but for the people around them.

In this conversation, we talk about StrongerMemory and the connection between cognitive confidence and isolation, why agency matters, and what changes when older adults are given opportunities to help rather than always being the ones receiving help. We talk about Goodwin Living’s work pairing young interns with resident mentors, loneliness across generations, and why Rob believes senior living can play a much bigger role outside its own walls. And we come back to a question I think all of us in this work should be asking: How do we create communities where people, at every age, know they still have something to give?

Listen to our episode HERE.

To learn more about Goodwin Living visit HERE.

A special thank you to Rendever for partnering with me on The Future of Community series. Through Rendever and CommunityOS, we’re looking at how we can better understand social health, strengthen connection, and help people feel known and part of their community. I’m grateful to be part of this work and to keep these conversations going.

Rendever is helping senior living communities and healthcare organizations put social health into practice. Through immersive experiences, dementia education, live programming, and CommunityOS, Rendever gives teams tools to better understand each person, strengthen connection, and see where someone may be becoming disconnected. CommunityOS brings resident engagement, social health insights, family connection, and programming together in one place, helping communities move beyond simply offering activities to more intentionally support belonging, purpose, and connection.

About Rob Liebreich

Robert “Rob” Liebreich started his service as President and CEO of Goodwin Living in July 2019. He brings energy, compassion and a creative drive, as well as proven leadership in senior living for over 20 years. Prior to joining Goodwin Living, Rob was the executive director of the Asbury Methodist Village (AMV), a not-for-profit continuing care retirement community in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He has also held senior positions in marketing and operations for senior living organizations in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area and the Pacific Northwest.Rob studied Business Administration and International Business and Marketing at Georgetown University and graduated 1997. He earned a Master of Business Administration with a concentration in Senior Care and Housing from Johns Hopkins University in 2005. Rob is a Certified Dementia Practitioner, and his other passions include his family, travel, mentoring and brain health.

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