Workforce & Leadership
Aging & Community
Student Engagement
The Future of Aging: Why It’s Our Symposium’s North Star
Twenty-five years ago, the Center for Aging & Community opened its doors with a simple conviction: that aging well is a community responsibility, not just an individual one. A quarter-century later, that conviction has proven true—in hundreds of student-led projects, a growing network of aging services partners, and countless moments when an older adult in Indianapolis and beyond found a program, a resource, or a person because CAC was there.
So when we started planning how to mark this anniversary, one question kept surfacing: What’s the one thing we want people to walk away thinking about?
The answer wasn’t nostalgia. It was the future.
Why “the future of aging,” specifically
Aging is the rare topic that touches everyone—every family, every workplace, every community—and yet it’s too often under-discussed until a crisis forces the conversation. We wanted our anniversary event to do the opposite: get ahead of the crisis.
Not “here’s what CAC has done,” but “here’s what’s coming, and here’s who is already building the answer.”
That’s the spirit behind our theme, The Future Starts Here. It’s not just a nod to 25 years of history; it’s a statement about what this event is for. We’re bringing together aging services professionals, providers, researchers, students, and older adults themselves to look forward together—not simply look back.
Why students are at the center of it
If we’re talking about the future of aging, the people closest to that future shouldn’t be an afterthought. They should be part of the main conversation.
That’s why our Aging Innovations Program student showcase isn’t a side session at this event; it’s core to the program. These are students designing real solutions to real challenges older adults face, often before they’ve even finished their coursework.
Funds raised through the CAC Impact Fund help make more of this work possible—more microgrants, more student-led ideas, and more opportunities for promising solutions to move beyond the whiteboard and into the community.
Investing in the future of aging, quite literally, means investing in the people who will shape it.
Why the room itself matters
Most events focused on aging bring together one audience at a time—a conference for providers, a briefing for policymakers, a workshop for caregivers. Those conversations are valuable, but they can also be siloed.
Real progress on aging happens at the intersections, when the people funding, delivering, studying, and living the experience of aging are actually in the same room, hearing the same ideas at the same time.
That’s what we’re building on October 1: aging services providers, city and government officials, educators and researchers, older adults, and family caregivers, all convening together.
Not separate conversations happening under one roof. One conversation, with every perspective that belongs at the table actually at the table.
A new way we’re telling this story
Speaking of looking forward, this feels like the right moment to let you in on something we’ve been building.
In the coming weeks, we’re launching Profiles in Aging & Community Leadership, a new column spotlighting the people shaping the future of aging services here in Indianapolis and beyond. Providers, researchers, policy leaders, connectors—the individuals doing the work that makes a symposium like this one possible in the first place.
Think of it as a preview of the people you’ll be learning from—and alongside—on October 1. We’ll be rolling out the first profiles soon, so keep an eye out.
Why this goes beyond year one
We’re calling this our inaugural symposium on purpose. The goal was never a single big anniversary celebration. It’s the first chapter of an annual tradition, and the future of aging is durable enough to hold that tradition together.
Unlike a single anniversary milestone, it’s a topic that renews itself every year: new research, new policy shifts, new innovations, new students with new ideas.
Keeping this as the central focus gives us something a one-off celebration never could: a reason for people to come back year after year, expecting to learn something new about where the field is headed.
That’s what turns an event into an institution.
Twenty-five years in, CAC isn’t just marking time. We’re looking ahead—and inviting the whole community to help shape what comes next.
