Editor’s Note: McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care are profiling the McKnight’s 2023 Pinnacle Awards honorees daily in April and May. For additional McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards content, visit this page.
Innovators connect the dots and perhaps no one does so better than J. Benjamin Unkle Jr., the president and CEO of Westminster-Canterbury on Chesapeake Bay in Virginia Beach, VA.
His designation as a 2023 McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards winner in the “Agent of Change” category was built on an extremely strong list of accomplishments.
Recognizing a need to keep older adults from succumbing to dementia and social isolation, Unkle partnered with the Eastern Virginia Medical School and Virginia Wesleyan College to create simplified touchscreen technology that could entertain, engage and better connect aging residents to their loved ones.
Initially dubbed the Birdsong Initiative in honor of a private donor, the technology’s research phase eventually evolved into the Birdsong Tablet, preloaded with hundreds of hours of music, videos, games and therapeutic content. The tablet was recognized by the American Society on Aging for its 2019 Mind-Alert award.
It was only the latest innovation to emerge under Unkle’s watch. In 2014, he created a nonprofit subsidiary called Senior Options to help other nonprofit senior living companies launch home health and hospice services by sharing back-office systems and executive talent.
Unkle also oversaw the purchase of Westminster-Canterbury’s first retirement rental community for those 62 or older, calling it Opus Select. He’s made a point of extending Westminster-Canterbury’s reach to those who may not have been able to afford it in the past.
He also was the first to launch the early advantage program in Virginia that allows senior members to begin to access his company’s life plan healthcare services and community programs while they’re still living independently in their own homes.
Unkle joined Westminster-Canterbury in 2009 after leading eight Erickson Retirement Communities facilities for more than 12 years.
A University of Maryland Law School alum, he now sits on the LeadingAge Virginia board.
The McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards program is jointly administered by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care. Honorees were recognized March 7 at a gala banquet and awards ceremony in Chicago. The program’s Platinum sponsor was MatrixCare. Omnicare was a Silver sponsor, and additional sponsors included Pinnacle Quality Insight, HealthDirect and Sentrics.
