Keri Vogtmann: An Innovator in 'AgeTech'

Keri Vogtmann knows the pillars of aging well: a healthy diet, active lifestyle, supportive community and a sense of purpose. She would like older adults to add another element: digital literacy.

"As we get older, we make sure we're eating right and getting exercise," Vogtmann says. "I'd throw in know enough about technology and stay in touch with what's happening in technology to get what we need done. You don't have to be a programmer or [an expert] understanding everything, but — for wellness — be comfortable with technology."

Vogtmann, 58, is an innovator and leader in the field of aging and technology, a growing industry known as "AgeTech." She is also one of Next Avenue's eight 2025 Advocates for Aging for her work helping older adults with digital literacy and how to capitalize on the potential of technology, not fear it.

"The messages we tell ourselves as we get older is that technology is only for younger people and it's not for me," she says. That's not true, she claims. A person's openness to learning new devices, products and systems can give them "the ability to embrace some of these opportunities."

She gives the example of her mother, who now loves using her tablet but didn't initially. "When we taught her how to use the tablet in her 80s, she felt bad asking for help, saying, 'I'm sorry you're going to have to explain this for the third time.' I said, 'I'll explain it to you as many times as I need to. You just need to get in the habit.' I want this group to know they can learn new things."

Beyond learning to use technology, Vogtmann believes that real magic happens when older adults become active partners in creating digital solutions. "It's not just about teaching someone to use a tablet.  It's about listening to their stories, understanding their daily challenges and designing technology that feels like it was made just for them." 

She's seen too many well-intentioned tech products or apps gather dust because they feel clunky or disconnected from real life. The key, she believes, is bringing older adults into the design process — letting them share their wisdom, frustrations and dreams. "When technology feels intuitive and speaks to their lived experiences, it transforms from a daunting gadget into a delightful companion that enhances rather than complicates their lives," she says.

It seems Vogtmann always was destined to work in the technology field: She was born and raised in Palo Alto, California, the heart of Silicon Valley, and started her career with Hewlett-Packard Company. An interest in international relations and policy led her to live and work in Singapore for several years before a fateful AARP Innovation Lab idea event she attended with her father a decade ago sparked her current work.

"It was happenstance," she explains. "An AARP health pitch event in Silicon Valley caught my eye and my parents lived there [so] I asked my dad to go with me. He was retired from NASA as a research scientist so he's someone who has always been interested in innovation and is himself an innovator. That's where we learned about the demographic shifts that were rapidly upon us as we tipped the balance toward older adults — not only in our society but globally."

Vogtmann says the smart and forward-thinking solutions she heard from the nearly dozen entrepreneurs and innovators at the event "lit the fire" in her. "I just knew between health care and IT (information technology), I wanted to go down into this more niche area," she says. "It was so inspiring because each one of those entrepreneurs had a story. Most of them were tied to their loved ones — thinking about their older relatives and what they're facing, some with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. I could start envisioning a world in which I could really be entrenched in it and have that passion for it."

Vogtmann channeled that passion into projects and roles that intersected health care, aging, innovation and technology all focused on what she self-describes as "improving the lives of older adults and caregivers." As part of that work, she has held a number of roles, including serving on the Adult and Aging Commission for Sacramento County; developing a diabetes education and management app for the European Institute of Innovation & Technology Health program; overseeing the distribution of Google Home devices to caregivers and older adults as the digital inclusion manager for Sourcewise; and serving as an American Society on Aging RISE Fellow in 2022. She also serves on the board for Community Tech Network whose mission is to empower underserved communities by providing digital literacy training to adults and access to technology.

Most recently, she worked as the strategic program director at ClearWellness, a lifestyle company focused on the independence and well-being of older adults that combines certified coaching with personal technology like smart watches, health monitors and home products. The company is a subsidiary of ClearCaptions, which provides phone captioning services for those with hearing loss.

"ClearWellness combines tech in the form of wearables with wellness coaching," Vogtmann explains. "They actually have coaches available to meet with older adults, one to two times a week, to help them craft their own goals based on whatever they want to do. Whether it's be in touch with friends more often to being able to walk more, to stretch more, to do whatever they want better. They take data from wearables, like a watch or a bed mat or a scale and supplement it and share it with the older adult or the older adult's caregiver so they're all on the same page and understand the well-being of that person."

ClearWellness is one example in the "AgeTech" realm that Vogtmann enjoyed but she decided recently to take a "sabbatical" to also examine the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in aging as well as the expansion of age-friendly communities worldwide.

"There are a couple areas that I've been exploring for my next steps and one is still in tech — the advent of AI and the collection of data applied to machine learning to make either processes more efficient or optimize how that data is used," she says. "AI holds so much promise, especially in the health care industry. They could see great gains in that area … but also potentially alarming [if] it is used for nefarious reasons. In the aging space, I'm most concerned about our older adults and how they're approached, especially scamming. We don't have our arms around scamming."

Vogtmann cited an FBI and AARP report that older Americans were scammed out of more than $3.4 billion in 2023. She now volunteers with AARP's Digital Fraud Fighters group using her technology and advocacy skills. "I'll be facilitating some conversations with victims who want the opportunity to talk," she says, "And also promote awareness among friends and the network about ways to avoid it. I see that as a great opportunity and something that urgently needs to be addressed. I'm hoping that with the rollout of AI, everyone is including some layer of protection into their product or service."

Vogtmann also is focusing on developing age-friendly environments across the globe, particularly the World Health Organization (WHO)-supported Age-Friendly Communities initiative, which helps communities with strategies that foster healthy aging by addressing the physical and social environments in which people live.

"[The movement] is taking a look at communities holistically, so tech is just a very small portion of it, but it's looking at housing and transportation and isolation and communication and public areas," she explains. She wants to make sure these communities are inclusive and become "an active part of the community rather than groups that are pushed aside to a senior center to just hang out there."

Her background in technology is certainly helping inform this work too as she notes the differences in the U.S. aging population compared with other nations: "You see where other countries are investing more of their dollars. In Asian countries like Japan and Taiwan, the governments are pumping a lot into robotics. Demographically, they're already far ahead and older, so companies like Honda are going into robotics heavily. And part of it is to allow older adults to stay in the workforce but … also to allow them to function and and live more independently. Each country has its own flavors, but the issues themselves are similar: The systems are not ready to support the financial, the welfare, and the health care, the labor of caregivers. That's a commonality."

Back to those other global commonalities to aging well: Yes, diet and exercise and social factors are proven important, but so is a fundamental understanding of technology and all it can offer older adults. There is assistive technology that may help people age in place and live independently in their homes longer; there are ways to avoid being scammed by understanding the latest methods; there are AI-generated plans for healthy living and other topics impacting aging. Vogtmann wants to help all generations embrace that potential.

Amy Nelson As an editor and journalist, Amy Nelson seeks out impactful stories to share with others. For nearly 20 years, she was the features editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where she worked collaboratively with a talented team to cover health and wellness, style, home and garden, travel, technology, entertainment, and other lifestyle topics. She also has been editor of Spaces magazine and most recently acted as the editor of Minnesota Monthly magazine before coming to Next Avenue as the health and caregiving digital editor. Over her career, she been able to interview celebrities from Prince to Roger Goodell and travel to exotic locations including Oman, Morocco, and the country of Georgia. Follow her on social media channels at @amykaynelson. Read More