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Advancing Age Friendly Seattle

Last month, Aging and Disability Services and the Seattle Human Services Department welcomed a new team member—Age Friendly Seattle Program Manager Dinah Stephens. Dinah comes to us with a nonprofit background in communications, policy advocacy, and electoral work. After more than 10 years with Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, most recently as Senior Director of Public Affairs, she has worked as a consultant to other mission-driven nonprofit groups seeking to advance justice and equity.

With a history of focusing on women’s health and rights in her work, Dinah was originally drawn to aging issues from a gender equity lens. While supporting the California Women’s Law Center, she was inspired to think more deeply about the inequities women experience over a lifetime and the ways in which these can compound in older years. She appreciates that the City of Seattle has a culture of centering racial and social justice and looks forward to continuing to lift this up through the Age Friendly Seattle initiative.

Passionate about improving the health of people and communities, Dinah is especially interested in fostering social connectivity that reduces loneliness and improves health outcomes. Recently, she explored this topic while obtaining her MSc in Global Health Policy at the London School of Economics. She also holds a BA from Santa Clara University.

As program manager, Dinah will support the next iteration of the Age Friendly Seattle initiative, which is now wrapping up the first cycle of its five-year strategic plan. Dinah will play a key role in evaluating progress made, and in building upon these successes and lessons learned to craft and operationalize the Age Friendly initiative going forward.

Dinah is a native Washingtonian. After spending 17 years in California, she has looked forward to moving back to our great state—rain and all. She is eager to learn from and connect with those who have been invested in supporting Seattle’s aging community. Dinah welcomes messages at Dinah.Stephens@seattle.gov.

This article originally appeared in the January 2022 issue of AgeWise King County.