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Dr. Imani Woody has a vision and she is bringing it to life. It reflects a lifetime of working at the intersection of LGBTQ, race, cultural diversity, and aging issues. And it is informed by her experience with her own father, an accomplished entrepreneur, who, after entering a "good" nursing home, experienced a decline in self-worth and physical health. She took her father out of the facility, into her home, and reimagined what is possible.

The model Dr. Woody has developed is based in research, including her own PhD thesis, which chronicled the challenges of aging, particularly for LGBTQ elders who are most likely to suffer from isolation, discrimination and marginalization, even in "the best" of senior facilities. She formed a nonprofit, and drew on her considerable professional experience with the Whitman Walker Center, the Mautner Project for Lesbians, the AARP Foundation Sage Metro DC and as an appointee to the DC Office of LGBTQ Affairs. In September 2020. she will break ground on the first Mary's Center for Older Adults, communal living for LGBTQ elders. And it will be located at the site of the home where she grew up in DC's Ward 7. She is hard at work, not just in DC, but in building the future of this model in all 50 states. Hear her story on Power Station and you will be a believer too.