National Family Caregivers Association

Friday Nov 20, 2009

Biographies

Suzanne Geffen Mintz, President/CEO/Family Caregiver

Cindy Fowler, NFCA Co-founder and member of the Board of Directors

Suzanne Geffen Mintz, President/Co-founder/Family Caregiver

Suzanne Mintz is a family caregiver for her husband, Steven, who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1974. Her longtime personal involvement with caregiving led her to the conclusion that chronic illness and disability affects the person who provides care as well as the one that requires it. In addition its impact goes beyond individual families and has become a national healthcare and social policy issue. She realized that family caregivers are part of a "silent and neglected workforce" that does not receive the recognition, training, support, assistance, or public policy attention it deserves. As a consequence she co-founded NFCA in 1993. Today, she spearheads the organization's efforts to meet the unmet needs of family caregivers.

Ms. Mintz spent over 25 years in the field of interior architecture and marketing prior to becoming NFCA's first paid chief executive in 1997. She worked at her "day job" and continued to build NFCA on borrowed time and during the evenings and on weekends before taking over the reins fulltime.

Accomplishments

Suzanne Mintz was named a winner of The Purpose Prize® in 2006, the award’s debut year. A major initiative to invest in Americans 60 and older who are leaders of a new age of social innovation, The Purpose Prize® is sponsored by Civic Ventures and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies and The John Templeton Foundation. Suzanne was also the 2004 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Eli Lilly Welcome Back initiative.

One of the first to champion the now widely held belief that caregiving is a life span issue that should be treated as such rather than dealt with in silos of age, relationship and diagnoses, Suzanne is recognized as a national spokesperson for family caregivers, as attested to by her appearances before Congress, her participation in the crafting of national legislation, and often sited remarks in major media outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune.

Currently, Suzanne serves on numerous national advisory committees and boards related to family caregiving. She is a founding advisor of Consumers Advocating for Patient Safety and a board member of the National Patient Safety Foundation. She helped develop the section on People with Disabilities for Healthy People 2010, the guiding document of the Centers for Disease Control. Policy makers and legislators regularly request her input to ensure that the family caregiver perspective is included in public policy initiatives.

In 2007, Suzanne released the book A Family Caregiver Speaks Up: "It Doesn't Have To Be This Hard", the revised and updated edition of Love, Honor & Value.

Education

Ms. Mintz received her BA in English from Queens College, City University of New York and her MS in Human Ecology from the University of Maryland. She is also a graduate of the 1996 class of Leadership Washington.

Cindy Fowler, NFCA Co-founder

Cynthia Fowler entered the world of caregiving in 1989. Her mother had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and was no longer able to live alone. Ms. Fowler invited her mother to move from Kansas City into the Fowler home in Maryland. With two sons still at home and a daughter in college, she quickly learned about life in the Sandwich Generation. Her experience as the only child of an aging and ailing parent inspired her to co-found the National Family Caregivers Association (NFCA) in 1993 with Suzanne Mintz during a shared respite weekend getaway.

Cindy is a principal of Graves Fowler Creative, an award-winning marketing communications firm located in Rockville, Maryland, leading successful campaigns such as AARP's With Our Youth program, the National Institute of Health's Breast Cancer minority education initiative and the Smithsonian's fundraising drive to conserve the Star Spangled Banner. Today she is responsible for general management, marketing and business development for the company and is a member of the American Marketing Association.

Over the years, Cindy has combined her desire to build NFCA with her experience in marketing by creating the association's identity and communications program. She has served as a board member and volunteered her time assisting with all collateral materials and NFCA's quarterly newsletter, TAKE CARE!

Ms. Fowler's degree is in English and Education from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.