Meet Bernice Hutchinson!
Bernice Hutchinson, already well into learning about the Dupont Circle Village as our second Executive Director, is a seasoned manager and strategist who has a significant track record of bringing resources to the elderly – and the not-so-elderly. The board of the Village expects her to draw on all of those skills as she goes forward.
Bernice succeeds the Village’s first executive director, Amy Gyau-Moyer, who worked with villagers and volunteers in the first, robust stage of our development. Amy and her family moved to Florida in late January to be near her husband’s parents who are ailing.
Bernice’s work within the national and state aging community spans a time of enormous change, with new resources becoming available to the aging community as older people themselves made dramatic shifts in their life styles and in their vision about how they want to thrive in the years before and after retirement. Many are determined to shape a life that is far different from the retirement lives of their parents. This fervent belief that they can shape a new “intentional community” has helped spawn the national “aging in place” movement.
As a leader in this movement, the board of the Dupont Circle Village saw in Bernice many of the right policy and personal attributes, including advocacy and organizing skills, to help us meet the challenges ahead. We enter our second full year with steady growth in membership, volunteers, and community support but with much work needed to broaden our programs and assure long-term financial stability.
Bernice says she saw the Village movement coming, as a leading policy advisor at the National Association of State Units on Aging for more than two decades.
She also had lived it. “The Village really does represent my own personal life. I was reared by elderly parents (in Baltimore) who thought nothing of living and remaining in their community – and that was 50 years ago. So the Village concept to me is natural and real. It celebrates how people want to be dynamic and vivacious and independent in their own homes in their later years.”
She also looks forward to taking “all of the great ideas and concepts being developed on the national level….right to the porch of the community.” She wants to make sure that these cutting-edge policies “will translate into valuable support that can be used by real people.”
At the National Association of State Units on Aging, Bernice counseled state aging directors, federal agencies, and national organizations on many issues related to aging.
She helped develop new systems and approaches to getting information to older consumers. She also put in place ways to keep state aging program professionals up to date with the fast-moving policy scene, including the development of websites, e-learning initiatives, and webcasts.
She won recognition for innovative leadership in helping connect state aging professionals with the latest national resource systems, such as the National Aging Information and Referral Support Center. She shaped outreach policies for communities around the country, while successfully writing grant proposals to support the states’ information and outreach efforts. The Department of Health and Human Services recognized Bernice for her work on the implementation of Medicare Part D education and the expansion of community-based outreach.
She organized – and supervised -- national training programs to certify more professionals in this new specialty of aging and also directed federally funded demonstration projects on caregiver issues.
Bernice, a graduate of Williams College in Massachusetts, has served on many federal and nonprofit advisory boards on aging advocacy and information programs. She lives in Southwest Washington with her husband of 26 years, Garry, and teen-aged daughter Allie who is an aspiring ballerina.