Ken Dychtwald Speaking Topics

• Enough is Enough: Consumers 50+ Want Marketing and Advertising to Grow Up

  The keynote is complete with heartfelt examples of what’s working and what’s not together with successful strategies to win over this often-overlooked consumer.

• How the Modern Family Is Transforming Aging, Retirement and Community

  We are all familiar with families like the Cleavers or the Simpsons—Dad, Mom, and 2.5 kids happily living under one roof in the suburbs. But over the past 100 years, significant demographic and economic changes have dramatically transformed the American familyand communities across the country. We no longer live in a world where most people are the member of a “nuclear family.” How is today’s modern family—or post-nuclear family—different? How do—and will—family changes impact health and care needs, the workforce, housing, legacy, leisure, social services, and financial planning? What are the implications for businesses and aging service providers? How do we navigate the potentially complicated relationships and compelling challenges faced by modern families in retirement and later life, such as blending families together and bridging the miles between relatives living in faraway communities? This presentation covers four trends that, in concert, have transformed and continue to profoundly influence today’s families: Unprecedented longevity, family complexity, financial interdependence, and women’s rising influence.

What is the New Vision for 21st Century Aging?

The 20th century is over—and most solutions to 20th century aging don’t work anymore. Are we prepared for the coming age wave? Can our country afford to have tens of millions of us living to 80, 90 or even 100+? Will existing entitlement programs survive long enough for young generations to reap even part of what they have been paying in? Can our current healthcare system handle the onslaught of chronic degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s? What should the role of medical science play in wiping out late life diseases? Who are the emerging role models of the new aging? Are our leaders capable of distributing limited government resources fairly among many generations, each with its own distinct needs, styles, fears, complaints, expectations and political priorities? This visionary presentation will explore both the problems that the age wave brings—and their five interlocking solutions.

Optimizing Generational Diversity: Four Cohorts Rethink Work, Money, Family, Retirement & Success

For the first time in history, four generations of active adults are simultaneously participating in the workforce and marketplace. Each has its own lifestyle values, attitudes about work and money, means of connecting and communicating, role models, and marketplace preferences.

This high-impact presentation will examine: What key social forces have shaped each generation and produced their distinct, core lifetime characteristics? What does each generation hope to get from—and give to—their jobs/careers? How do you manage and motivate each generation, from "encore" workers seeking stimulation and self-worth, to older workers looking for balance and purpose, to mid-career workers trying to reboot their enthusiasm for a longer and more demanding worklife, to young workers struggling to enter the workforce during tough economic times. How does each measure success?

This presentation can focus on how to attract and retain valuable talent and enhance productivity through the creative use of flexible work arrangements, innovative learning, mentoring and sponsoring opportunities, sabbaticals, retraining, re-careering, flex-retirement, and creative compensation and benefits programs. Alternatively, it can orient toward the most effective ways to reach out to—and connect with—Millennials, Gen Xers, Boomers, and members of the Silent Generation.

A New Agenda for 21st-Century Aging: Seven Critical Course Corrections Needed for a Century of Successful Aging

Will the aging of America prove to be a triumph or a tragedy? Based on 35-plus years at the crossroads of demography, gerontology, healthcare, and business, Ken Dychtwald provides a big-picture presentation designed to inform, startle, provoke, and motivate us toward the seven critical course corrections needed for a century of successful aging.

Questions to be asked—and answered: Is the longevity revolution over—or is it just beginning? Can our country afford to have tens of millions of us living to 80, 90, or even past 100? Are older adults an asset or a liability? How will boomers age differently than their parents? When does old age begin—and should old-age benefits be indexed to advancing longevity? How must our current healthcare system change to manage the onslaught of boomers and their chronic degenerative diseases? Is retirement obsolete? What should be the new purpose of maturity? Are we becoming a political gerontocracy? Are our leaders capable of distributing limited government resources fairly among many generations, each with its own distinct needs, styles, fears, expectations, and political priorities?

The Cure for Our Aging Healthcare System

Whether we live long lives with vitality and purpose or sickness and suffering will depend to a great extent on our ability to reshape the skills, services, and incentives of our current healthcare system. This new presentation provides a visionary glimpse into the future, outlining the critical course corrections required to create healthy aging and productive longevity.

Topics to be covered include: Why we must accelerate the scientific breakthroughs needed to prevent, delay, and eliminate the horrific diseases of aging (such as Alzheimer's); why training healthcare professionals to become "aging-ready" will both saves lives and money; how the boomers' proclivity toward control, self care, and connectivity can help make disease prevention and self care a national priority; how new technologies and emerging community-based services can enable us to shift the healthcare focus from hospitals and nursing facilities to home-based care; why establishing a humane and dignified approach to end-of-life care has reached a critical tipping point.