Bio

Since looking after my late husband for four years, the focus of my writing and research has been on caregiving. I have been a facilitator for family caregivers of dementia patients for the Alzheimer's Society of Washington, lectured on caregiving at the end-of-life ("From Burden to Enlightenment," "The Gifts of Caregiving") and presented the workshop "Empowerment for Caregivers." I also completed a four-part series on caregiving for a regional publication.

I received my Ph.D. from Michigan State University and completed my post-doctorate studies at Stanford University. I have more than three decades experience as a teacher, writer, advocate and researcher. My body of work includes nine books, and more than 100 articles, encyclopedia entries, research reports, book chapters and reviews. I am active in numerous community organizations, and was recently selected President of the Western Washington University Retirement Association (WWURA).

During my tenure at Chapman University, I was instrumental in implementing a new criminal justice program for use at two campuses in the Northwest. During my travels abroad, I taught at The University of Sydney Law School, The Flinders University of South Australia and Southern Cross University. Previously, I was a Professor of Sociology for more than 18 years at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.

Over the course of my career, I have received numerous grants for studies on youth, homelessness, women, domestic violence and curriculum development. While a Senior Fulbright Scholar, I began an extensive research project in Australia, conducting interviews of homeless young women and the social welfare agencies that serve them. My findings appear in the book Youth Crisis: Growing Up in the High-Risk Society. I have worked as a consultant to federal, state and local agencies in the U.S., and in March of 2009, I was approved as a Fulbright Specialists candidate. What an honor being nominated again.

I was recently recognized for 15 years of outstanding service at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. While I miss being in the classroom, I continue to pursue my passion for learning and getting the word out about the caregiving journey.

3 comments:

  1. Dear Dr. Davis:

    My name is Eric Vengroff and I am the President of Searchlings.com, a digital advertising agency in Toronto, Canada. Prior to starting this company a few months back, like you I was in the ‘aging’ space, and still advise a number of companies and associations with respect to the boomer/senior market. I was the first CEO Fifty-Plus.Net International Inc., owners of 50Plus.com, one of the world’s biggest sites for the 50+ demographic. In 2007, I sold control of this company to renowned media entrepreneur Moses Znaimer, who founded CityTV and about 20 other TV channels in Canada. The site has been re-branded today as EverythingZoomer.com. I served for another 5 years as both Executive Vice President of ZoomerMedia Limited, the new name for my past company, and as Vice President & General Manager of CARP, the Canadian analog to AARP in the U.S. with around 350,000 members.
    I have been working with a new client that has built a website called More50.com, which has already become quite popular, receiving about 50,000 visitors a month and growing. The site contains curated and custom content on the topics of aging, wellness, seniors, caregiving, finance, retirement and much more variables in the ‘aging equation’. They are looking for original and specialized content from experts and people with first-hand experience on these topics. As a startup, they don’t have much to pay for content but what they can offer in exchange is exposure, predominantly in North America, where most of their visitors come from. They will offer permanent, paying blogger/author positions to those authors who show good traction in terms of page views, comments, positive feedback, etc. They have also established a regular newsletter stream that will go out to primary and affiliated lists. More50.com also will have regular ‘Cover’ subjects on their home page and they are looking for interesting ‘Cover Girls’ or ‘Cover Boys’ to be the subject of in-depth biographies and inspirational, motivational stories, or strategies for successful aging.
    If the any of the above is of any interest to you, please respond to my email address, eric.vengroff@gmail.com, elv@searchlings.com or send me a note via LinkedIn http://ca.linkedin.com/in/ericvengroff.
    Thanks for your consideration,
    Eric

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  2. I'm very interested in your "strategies for successful aging." Very good, useful topic. Do you pay, or is this primarily promotion for my books?
    Thanks much,
    Nanette

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  3. Hi Dr. Davis,

    I'm reaching out as part of a startup that is working to alleviate senior isolation.

    We have just completed our first product and would like to let up to 100 of your readers use it for free while we further develop it.

    The service, called ShareMail, lets people use Facebook to send paper letters- for example, to a parent or grandparent in their life who is not on Facebook but would like to see some of their pictures or get messages from them in a letter.

    Is this an opportunity you are interested in? I'd also be happy to discuss any other ways we could work together to help improve older people's lives.

    Thanks for your consideration, and sorry to reach out in a comment! I couldn't find an email for you ;)

    Jeff Jackson
    cofounder

    ShareMail.me
    (917) 719-2545
    jeff@sharemail.me

    ReplyDelete