The SAGE Team
PRESIDENT
“My dream is to be surrounded by caring friends and neighbors who inspire and motivate each other be our best and happiest selves. The possibilities of thriving in a cohousing community far exceed what I can ever hope for in a traditional neighborhood. Movie night is just a few steps away in the common house. Weekly shared meals bond us together. Shared errand-running makes life easier. And it keeps getting better!”
Gail Bagley
Gail Bagley consultants for a non-profit that provides referral services and classes to older adults. Previously she was the Director of Educational Programs for a home care agency. She currently resides in Lakeland, FL.
As a Master Food and Nutrition Program volunteer, Gail enjoys teaching healthy eating classes to older adults. She is also an Outing Leader for her local Sierra Club group, and is pleased to have (finally) led her first backpack trip at age 60!
While working for the home care agency, Gail saw the results of lack of planning for many older adults. She decided the time was right to begin promoting senior cohousing in her area.
Gail has since formed Friends and Neighbors Senior Cohousing, which is currently in the process of creating a core group.
TREASURER
“Having lived in cohousing for the last 25 years, my life has been profoundly changed. I came here as a single mom and experienced not only support for my family but also how I could do that for others. I can’t imagine living any other way. And now as a budding boomer, I’m aware of what’s crucial to aging successfully – one is to be in a community setting to facilitate a health, fun, vibrant, and impactful life – to not only give and receive support but to also be of service to the wider world. I’m on the SAGE Board to share with others the secret sauce of cohousing for seniors. I think—no, I KNOW—senior cohousing is a powerful answer to aging well!”
Dyan Wiley
Dyan is a founding member of Pioneer Valley Cohousing and served on that community’s Development Team. Over the years Dyan has informally advised several cohousing start-ups and led a variety of skills building workshops at national cohousing conferences. She is very enthusiastic about senior and senior-focused multi-generational cohousing as a vibrant element of resilient communities. She trained with Chuck Durrett as a Study Group I facilitator and has led two “Aging Successfully” groups of interested households.
Dyan works full time at Mount Holyoke College as Assistant Director of Foundation Relations to develop and steward institutional campus initiatives. When not doing her day job, she offers training, consulting, and coaching to cohousing communities in their early development and those recently established. Her support focuses helping to attract and engage new member households; develop effective group process practices; understand and practice cooperative decision making (whether consensus or sociocratic); and navigate development and adoption of community policies, agreements, management structures and norms. Most recently she worked with Belfast Cohousing and Ecovillage in Maine with training members in facilitation and cooperative decision making skills; developing several community policies including their land use master plan; and making the change to a sociocratic system of decision-making. In her free time, Dyan loves kayaking and exploring new places with her partner Tor. They both also volunteer to accompany immigrant individuals and families to their ICE check-ins and court hearings.
Trudy Hussmann
SECRETARY
“As a single retired adult, I knew that senior cohousing would provide me with the right balance of social interaction, purpose and privacy. It’s a very engaging experience on many levels, perfect for those who want to stay active physically, mentally and socially.”
Trudy has been a member of PDX Commons Senior Cohousing in Portland, OR, for five years. She feels very fortunate to have learned of the still-forming community just about the time she retired in 2016. She had been living in her own home for more that 20 years and did not envision that as the best option for her future.
Trudy had two careers — first as a social worker, then as a communication specialist. In the latter role she created a wide range of materials for print and Web, including marketing communications, over the course of 20-some years.
A former avid cyclist who logged 10,000 miles in nine years, Trudy now prefers hiking in the beautiful country of Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington. During the first year of the pandemic, she went on some 40 solo hikes, preferring the risks of the great outdoors to those of Covid-19. Hiking gives her great opportunities to pursue photography, a serious avocation.
Carolyn Salmon
PROJECT LIAISON, FORMER BOARD MEMBER
Carolyn Salmon is a founding member and resident of Quimper Village Senior Cohousing in Port Townsend, WA.
Carolyn has had three “for pay” careers paths: research microbiologist, financial services including as Certified Financial Planner, and environmental regulator. Her fourth career as a volunteer includes many stints as a board member and president for: her church, League of Women Voters, Planned Parenthood, ACLU, and co-chair of a commission to draft a charter for her home county in Florida.
Carolyn is convinced that cohousing offers seniors the kind of community life that supports and strengthens happy lives in a fast-changing world. All ages thrive in an environment of easily accessible friends, mentors, and supporters. Carolyn’s current QV role as Board President has given her a wide perspective on the transition from developing a senior cohousing community to living in community.
Chuck Durrett
EMERITUS
“There are too many seniors in America that do not have a familiar, even loving, community nearby. Senior cohousing is a place where you know, care about and support your neighbors. Town after town in America is trying to spend the money to give seniors the support they need — but they often fall short. But neighbors that live nearby can do it. That’s what senior cohousing provides. Please help us get this concept familiar around America so that each senior can imagine this option and we can help them manifest that possibility.”
Chuck Durrett is an architect, author, and advocate of affordable, socially responsible and sustainable design. He is the principal architect at The Cohousing Company, based in Nevada City, California. Chuck has designed over 50 cohousing communities in North America and has consulted on many more around the world. His work has been featured in numerous national newspapers, magazines and TV shows. He has won many awards for his work, including the Human Habitat award presented by the United Nations. He has also given many public presentations, including two to the U.S. Congress. Chuck continues to devote his time to new cohousing groups and affordable housing development startups.
Chuck’s book Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities, published in 1988 and coauthored with Kathryn McCamant, introduced cohousing to the United States. He also wrote The Senior Cohousing Handbook: A Community Approach to Independent Living as well as a dozen other books about housing. The Oxford English Dictionary credits him and former partner Kathryn McCamant with coining the word cohousing.
Alexandria Levitt
PROJECT LIAISON; FORMER BOARD MEMBER
“I want to create Senior Cohousing because I believe it is a promising, progressive and active way to get older. I feel best when I know friends and family are nearby and as a gerontologist I know that isolation is the worst thing we can do to ourselves. The people I know in cohousing are having fun, really busy and always engaged. That's what I want.”
Alexandria Levitt is a gerontologist, specializing in Community Engagement and Strategic Partnerships around Senior Housing and Aging Care Services. She is interested in developing housing for older people that doesn’t just show off a “lifestyle” imagined by corporate developers but one that reinforces the qualities that help us most as we get older – friendship, community and purpose.
As a gerontologist, Alexandria is very familiar with the many challenges facing older adults and the remarkable connection between health (both mental and physical) and social engagement.
She is the co-author (with Charles Durrett) of State-of-the-Art Cohousing: Lessons Learned from Quimper Village, an in-depth study of the successful creation of a senior cohousing community in Port Townsend, Washington that looks at every step of their process and features interviews with residents, lots of photos, timelines and more.
Alexandria is on the Board of the Senior Citizen’s Foundation of South Pasadena and served on the city’s Senior Citizen Commission for 6 years. Her goal is to move the needle in the creation of cost effective, appealing, environmentally friendly housing that can be home for older adults, intergenerational communities, veterans, and the physically and mentally challenged.
Currently, Alexandria is the Project Manager for SOS Children’s Villages California that seeks to create a new foster care “village” in the greater Los Angeles area.
Kristopher Stevens
PROJECT LIAISON; FORMER BOARD MEMBER
“I think we all should be living in Cohousing, which is why I’m working to build one for my family and so keen to advocated and build capacity to make it a reality for others. Cohousing to me is like a perfect cup of cocoa, coffee or tea. You can have it black (total privacy) or mix in as much cream, almond milk, sweetener (community) as you like. Young or older you can make your perfect cup every day in cohousing with people you love and who love you.”
Kristopher is an experienced consultant, advisor and catalytic leader in the field of economic, social and ecological value creation with more than 15 years experience on four continents in commercial, public, indigenous and community partnership building, sustainable energy, strategic planning, impact investment, communications, stakeholder engagement and policy and regulatory change.
Kristopher is currently facilitating the formation of intergenerational and adult cohousing projects in Eastern Canada while working to advance sustainability and innovation in businesses and the labour movement. In this capacity he serves as the Managing Director of CoLiving Canada cohousing consultants, the President of Centre of a Circle sustainability consultants and the Sustainability and Innovation Advisor to the Canadian Union of Skilled Workers.
Prior to his current work Kristopher served seven years as the Executive Director of the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association and was the founding Chair of the alliance that successful secured Ontario’s Green Energy and Economy Act making Community Power, manufacturing, community planning, conservation and renewables a priority. Other highlights from his career include recruiting executives for Fortune 500 multinationals in Asia, hosting a popular South Korean radio program and researching economic reform in Africa and the sensitive topic of social friction in Ontario's electricity sector.