LOVING SENIORS SHAPE CLEARWATER PRESIDENT MORGAN’S LIFELONG CAREER
BY PATRICK CONNOLE D
anielle Morgan’s love of seniors comes from a place close to her heart. The president and chief operating officer of Clearwater Living told a recent Argentum Women in Leadership
(WIL) Zoom call that the loss of her grandparents when she was very young left a void in her life then and helped form a lifelong passion to work for the care of elders. “I was always envious of my friends who had grandpar-
ents. And I loved being at my friend's house when their grandparents were around,” she said. “I was in the Girl Scouts and so when it came time to get my gerontology badge, I started volunteering in the local nursing home in the town that I grew up in in northeastern Ohio.” She described the volunteer time as something she “abso-
lutely loved,” feeling that she was doing a valuable thing in visiting with seniors who seemed so lonely. “I would go in and sit and chat. I read them their mail and just visited. It was so rewarding to me because of what I got from them and how they made my heart warm and feel good,” Morgan said. This feeling of making a difference carried over to when it became time to get her first job in high school. “I applied for a job at the local CCRC in town and I was
hired to be a server in the independent living dining room,” Morgan said. All employees parked in the back parking lot, she recalled, which was where the skilled nursing building was located. “They didn't want anybody to see skilled nurs- ing. So, to get to the time clock, I would walk through skilled nursing. And along the way I had friends down the hallway that I would pop in and out of their rooms to say hi and let them know I was thinking about them. And I just loved the environment,” Morgan said.
Pride in the Job Other elements of her first job in the senior living profession resonate even today, as she remembers feeling proud to show off her place of employment during an open house held by the community.
34 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE MAY/JUNE 2023 “I invited my parents and my boyfriend's parents because
I was so proud of where I was working. And I remember at that time telling my parents when they came to see the community, I said, ‘this is what I want to do when I grow up. I want to run a community like this. I want to be in charge of this place.’” Morgan likened the independent living setting in the
complex to being on a cruise ship for seniors. “That work experience at Laurel Lake Retirement Com-
munity in Hudson, Ohio, led me to decide to go to Ohio University and major in long term health care adminis- tration,” she said. “And through that program there was a practicum and internship. I actually ended up working in the nursing home that I volunteered in as a Girl Scout to get my internship hours. I did a practicum out at a CCRC on the east side of Cleveland, and the more I was experiencing the day-to-day, I knew this is exactly what I wanted to do,” she added.
Starting Young By the time she reached the ripe old age of 22, Morgan was running a small skilled nursing unit of a retirement commu- nity in California, where she had always wanted to move, but she did not last long on the skilled side. “I was there three-and-a-half years, enough to learn that
there's an opportunity to do things better in long-term care. But then I was given an opportunity through a colleague, somebody that I met working at a health care group at the time that interviewed to be the executive director to open the first Sunrise community in San Diego, Sunrise at La Costa,” Morgan said. Her friend got back from the interview and said the job
was not a good fit for her, but would be for Morgan. “I was starting to feel disenchanted with skilled nursing, disenchant- ed with that beeper going off 24/7 because we didn't have nurses. So, our nursing shortage was a problem back then, too. But that was my entry way into assisted living and I had
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