Lindsay Goldman: A Mission To Make Longevity 'the Gift It Should Be'
The CEO of Grantmakers in Aging believes 'our entire way of life needs to be adapted to account for increased longevity'
Lindsay Goldman is 45 ½ years old and she doesn't mind that you know that. In fact, as the CEO of Grantmakers in Aging (GIA), based in White Plains, New York, Goldman, a 2025 Advocate for Aging, regularly offers people on her team, and others, the opportunity to proclaim their own ages.
"If we're on a Zoom call and we're all introducing ourselves, I will say 'I'm 45. If you want to add your age to your introduction, you're welcome to do that,'" says Goldman, who also has her age displayed in her GIA email signature.
Participants in last year's annual GIA conference were invited to add their ages to their conference badges or speak their ages during the opening plenary so attendees could have an idea of the age diversity in the room.
"We asked, 'how many people are in their 20s?' and then everybody would cheer," Goldman says. "We had people there from their 20s to their 80s. And that, to me, is the beauty of our network. We are the aging population."
"We had people there from their 20s to their 80s. And that, to me, is the beauty of our network. We are the aging population."
Admitting that "some people find it liberating, others find it threatening" to proclaim their ages, Goldman says the concept of one individual's age speaks to a much broader issue of aging in this country today.
"We don't have the systems in place that we need. Our systems, policies and institutions; our entire way of life needs to be adapted to account for increased longevity," she says.
Grantmakers in Aging is "a community of funders mobilizing money and ideas to strengthen policies, programs and resources" for everyone as they age. It was founded in 1982 by Trudy Cross, a consultant with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, who convened a group to discuss topics on aging and ideas for programming.
Throughout its history, GIA has continued to build a network of funders dedicated to serving the needs of older adults relative to policies, programs and resources for the aging population.
Goldman has been CEO since January 2021, bringing to her role the experience of more than 20 years in a career dedicated to programs and services focused on aging systems. She was the founding director of the Center for Healthy Aging at The New York Academy of Medicine with a focus on public-private partnerships promoting age-inclusive environments including the award-winning Age-friendly NYC, Health & Age Across All Policies NYS and IMAGE: The Interactive Map of Aging.
Goldman's interest in pursuing a career in the field of aging policies and programming was sparked at a time when many career aspirations are typically launched; she was in sixth grade and participated in a unique intergenerational program.
"I had this really incredible teacher, and he arranged for our class to visit the Actors Home in New Jersey, which is a nursing home for people who had been in movies and theatre. We went there once a week for a year," she says.
"We have to honor people's experiences, identities and wisdom."
The older adults "had every possible role connected with show business that you could imagine and they had incredible stories," she says. "What I think was unique is that when our teacher presented this opportunity to us, we weren't going there to 'cheer up the old people in the nursing home.' We were going there to learn from older people and to benefit from their history and experience."
Goldman's takeaway from those many conversations was that even though their age was part of their identities, they still considered themselves actors, directors, ushers, etc. "They didn't just identify as an old person," she says. "From them I learned that age is just one component of life. You're still an individual, you're still you. We have to honor people's experiences, identities and wisdom."
Immediate Challenges
The aging population continues to grow; according to the Pew Research Center, there are currently roughly 62 million adults ages 65 and older living in the U.S., accounting for 18% of the population. By 2054, 84 million adults ages 65 and older will make up an estimated 23% of the population.
According to Goldman, structural and systemic issues are tied with the long-term challenges of serving older adults.
"The lack of a comprehensive, high-quality system for delivering and financing long-term care and the lack of a workforce to deliver that care means that many of us are not going to have access to the supports we need if we live long enough," she says. "That is also very closely tied to financial insecurity and the inability to afford the cost of living and aging."
"We have around our table a membership that is deeply passionate about aging issues."
Goldman points out that older adults are the fastest growing homeless population. "For so many of us to be so financially insecure and so challenged to access the kind of health care and supports we need is a very big problem," she says. "And that's exacerbated by social isolation which can cause poor health and just makes people incredibly vulnerable in later life."
Potential federal funding cuts are creating a greater sense of urgency, Goldman says. "Philanthropy cannot fill in for what government has provided. We have around our table a membership that is deeply passionate about aging issues. These are people who have already been sold [on aging needs] but they had never been activated in any way around any aging policy, aging legislation or budgetary issues."
Addressing the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act, Goldman says, "It's a really critical piece of legislation that has traditionally been bipartisan and addresses the social drivers of health in later life. We wanted to see what it would look like to mobilize our network around an aging policy — many of our members are partnering with government to deliver those services. So for every federal dollar that goes into the Older Americans Act, an additional $3 to $4 are leveraged from private sources — our members, our funders."
"Our role is to help build the capacity of our network to become more involved in funding and policy conversations because we have members all over the country."
A component of GIA's Strategic Plan, says Goldman, is to elevate the intersections of aging and other funding priorities. "[In 2025], we have the anniversaries of Medicare and Medicaid (60th), Social Security (80th) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (35th), and we've made a lot of really important gains as a result of those programs. But people are still struggling," she says. "Our role is to help build the capacity of our network to become more involved in funding and policy conversations because we have members all over the country. It's important that policymakers hear from people who are investing in the aging population."
The challenge is significant; a personal story Goldman shared in the February GIA newsletter offered a moving example that system-wide issues facing older adults are lived out by many individuals on a daily basis.
She wrote about her cousin, Jane, to whom she was connected for the first time in 2022 as the result of an Ancestry.com search by another relative. Jane was close to 80, a solo ager in New York City and an artist who was living with some health and mobility challenges. In the piece, Goldman writes that "Jane's biggest fear was that she was going to outlive her savings and have to 'live at the Salvation Army.'"
In our conversation, Goldman said that Jane "had this sort of lust for life, even though she had considerable health problems. She was fiercely independent. She lived in a walk-up apartment, which is fine until it's not fine."
The two only met in person a couple of times, but Goldman said that Jane would frequently text her poetry that she'd written. The last one she sent was titled "You're Alive." Jane died about six months ago from pneumonia and in fact, despite her fears, did not outlive her savings.
Helping older adults, like her cousin Jane, find the resources they need to live without fear as they age is a mission that Goldman and her colleagues are ardently pursuing so that "longevity is the gift that it should be," she says.
