F5: Designing Blue Zone-Inspired Communities Through Dynamic Life Enrichment/Dining Collaboration
Thursday, June 18 | 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM
Target Audience: Service Coordinators; Assisted Living/Personal Care; Clinical; Governance & Leadership
This interactive teaching session and live cooking demonstration reframes culinary programming as a powerful, evidence-informed strategy for building Blue Zone–inspired communities within senior living environments. Blue Zones, regions of the world where people live longer, healthier lives, demonstrate that longevity is not driven by medical intervention alone, but by social architecture, daily systems that reinforce connection, purpose, belonging, and healthy behavior.
This session will illustrate how cooking-based experiential programming operationalizes these principles in a practical, scalable way across all levels of care.
In addition to foundational instruction and demonstration, the session will feature a moderated discussion with two industry leaders:
Carol Silver-Elliott, President and CEO of Jewish Home Family, will share executive-level insight and real-world outcomes from implementing experiential, cooking-based programming and broader culture-building strategies that reinforce connection, dignity, and purpose across a large, multi-level senior care organization.
Scott Daniels, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at NEXDINE Hospitality, will provide an operational lens on how dining departments can effectively partner with life enrichment teams, aligning culinary services with intentional programming to support engagement, culture, and resident experience at scale.
Together, this session bridges theory, application, leadership, and operations, offering attendees a comprehensive roadmap for integrating Blue Zone principles into daily community life.
NAB/NCERS
Speaker Information
CEO/Founder, Culinary Life Academy
Danny Corsun has been a chef educator since 2000. He initially developed a classroom program that taught academic subjects through engaging cooking classes, fostering a fun learning environment and improving cognitive processing and retention. In 2005, Danny expanded his reach by creating Culinary Kids Academy, which delivered math, science, history, and nutrition curriculum to youth across Los Angeles. In 2009, he launched Culinary Judaics Academy, a faith-based division. CJA offers in-person workshops and a digital, “Netflix-esque” library of content, providing a “Master class for Jewish learning through cooking.” This high-quality platform delivers dynamic, experiential lessons nationwide to Jewish individuals of all ages, affiliations, and levels of practice in senior communities, schools, camps, college campuses, and adult learning environments. CJA’s content also trains dining and hospitality staff to better understand and cater to Jewish communities and serves as an effective fundraising and donor recognition tool for Foundations/Non-Profits. In November 2025, the company launched its most ambitious and empowering division yet, Culinary Life Academy, its new non-faith-based division. This venture brings Danny’s original classroom teaching pedagogy full circle, offering experiential/multi-academic discipline learning through the company’s acclaimed “master-class” video model to senior communities and K-12 classrooms nationwide. This platform can also be leveraged as meaningful and transformational Staff and Board of Director professional development, as well as a highly successful donor engagement tool. . Websites are: www.culinaryjudaicsacademy.com www.culinarylifeacademy.com
CEO/President, Jewish Home Family
Carol Silver Elliott is the President and CEO of the Jewish Home Family, located in northern New Jersey. Serving older adults for more than a century, the Jewish Home continuum of services includes the Jewish Home at Rockleigh, offering both long term care and short term rehabilitation; Jewish Home Assisted Living; Jewish Home at Home, providing home health care services; Jewish Home Foundation as well as a nationally recognized program for the care of individuals with Parkinson’s disease. Prior to joining the Jewish Home Family in 2014, Silver Elliott served as the President and CEO of Cedar Village Retirement Community in Cincinnati, Ohio. Silver Elliott began her career in acute care, serving strategic roles in marketing, planning and public relations. Entering the world of older adult services in 2007, she immediately became involved on both a State and national level. She serves on the board of the Association of Jewish Aging Services and served as chair of the board from 2013-2015. She was a board member of LeadingAge Ohio and served on the board of LeadingAge New Jersey/Delaware from 2015-2021. She is also a member of the board of the VNA of Central New Jersey. In 2012, Silver Elliott joined the board of LeadingAge, the organization that represents nonprofit senior care providers around the country and served as chair of that board from 2020-2022. Passionate about elder abuse prevention, Silver Elliott was instrumental in founding the Shalom Center at Cedar Village in 2010 and in developing SeniorHaven at the Jewish Home in 2015. She is the recipient of numerous State and national awards for innovation and leadership and has spoken at conferences both around the country and internationally. Her biweekly blogs in The Times of Israel have been published continuously since 2015 and her personal blog, With a Full Heart, is published weekly on Word Press. Silver Elliott is also a registered yoga teacher (RYT). She completed her 200-hour teacher training in 2021, certification in Chair Yoga Dance in 2023 and her 300-hour teacher certification in 2024.
Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, NEXDINE
