Meet The Board

Dr. Lydia K. Manning is a gerontologist, educator, and entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience in aging, health, and well-being. She currently serves as Director of Professional Education and Consulting Services at the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University, where she leads workforce development and knowledge translation initiatives that strengthen aging services across Ohio and beyond. Lydia is also the CEO and Co-Founder of Circle of Life Consulting, Inc., and Co-Founder of Wally’s Hearth, a social hospice home based in Oak Park, Illinois, dedicated to providing compassionate, person-centered end-of-life care.

Tiffany Noelle Johnson is a certified end-of-life and dementia death doula, educator, and advocate dedicated to helping individuals and families navigate dying, grief, and loss with clarity and compassion. She is the Founder of We Too Shall Pass, where she provides personalized guidance, practical education, ceremony, and non-medical support grounded in dignity and individual choice. Chair of the Oak Park End-of-Life Options Coalition, Tiffany also works to expand awareness of end-of-life choices and encourage meaningful conversations before a crisis occurs. She is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Wally’s Hearth, Illinois’s first social-model hospice home, where her deeply human approach to care helps ensure that no one faces the end of life alone.

Nancy Betker is a social worker from beginning to end. She supported young people as a school social worker for 32 years and now focuses her expertise on educating and empowering all adults about end-of-life planning and options.  She experienced very positive death events with each of her parents; one expected and one unexpected. This is because each communicated their wishes early on.  Learning, planning and discussing decisions is a gift to ourselves and our loved ones. Nancy strives to share information with others about this critical but inevitable truth in all of our lives. 

Ned Wagner brings nearly 40 years of social service experience to the Wally’s Hearth Board of Directors. He holds a Master of Social Work from Dominican University and a Master of Human Services Administration from Spertus College. Ned has supervised residential programs for adults with developmental disabilities and spent 11 years as a Memory Care Director, working closely with hospice providers to ensure dignified, compassionate end-of-life care. A longtime community volunteer and civic leader, he believes Illinois’ first community hospice house will offer profound social and spiritual benefit to families.

Julie Lindblad Iverson is Geriatric Care Manager and

End-of-Life Doula. Her company, Aging with Care,

was founded in 2007.

I provide non-medical, non-judgmental, holistic care,

support and guidance to individuals and their loved

ones as they navigate the challenges and transitions

of aging and dying.

I work with families before, during, and after death to

develop plans of care that prioritize comfort, dignity,

and autonomy.

I help individuals articulate, document and share their

end-of-life wishes, navigate complex medical

decisions

Since 1994, Ben has been giving legal and lay audiences a reprieve from some of the most complex and boring topics in the legal field (specifically, Estate Planning, ERISA, Medicaid, and Eldercare). His delivery style helps you understand the important aspects of these topics in a way that gives you the ability to educate your clients on the issues that they need to know and to help you avoid malpractice. 

Monica DiOrio is a licensed social worker and hospice liaison. Throughout her career, she’s focused on serving the aging population through thoughtful education, compassion, and fierce advocacy. Her time in the aging care arena started when she was a young girl visiting her yiayiaat a skilled nursing home and volunteering there with her papou, putting marketing folders and patient charts together. She’s always wanted to serve others through her work, which led her through roles in guardianship, adult protective services, until finding a perfect niche in hospice. 

Marianne Moore is a physician (MD) with a long (45 yrs.+), and varied medical careexperiences.  She is board certified in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology but also has significant knowledge in other medical areas i.e. family practice, occupational medicine, travel medicine, public health, and physical therapy.