With over forty years as a community, corporate, and military trainer/educator, Erin has been active as a transgender and LGBTQ+ Senior community advocate, community educator for over two decades. She was instrumental in changing attitudes and policies regarding transgender and other queer people across southern Arizona in public and private businesses, local and state government, academia, social services agencies and medical and mental facilities including the Southern Arizona Veterans Administration Health Care System, where she provided training to primary care and mental health teams as well as VA Vocational Rehabilitation teams across Arizona. 

Erin served as an Army Infantry officer for 12 years, holding key staff positions at all levels, including the Division and Theater of Operations level. She was cited for developing model individual and collective training programs. She developed and implemented internal customer service processes and HR policies for several businesses and trained Human Resources and senior management staff on integrating transgender personnel. She was instrumental in training a major shelter provider in best practices for serving the transgender community. Erin currently assists LGBTQ+ people to complete their Advance Medical Planning documents and is developing resources to ensure “Solo Seniors” can find competent, supportive powers of attorney.

Jean Van Ryzin is Senior Director of Communications at NCOA, where she oversees all external messaging for the organization. Jean manages a team of marketing and communications specialists tasked with building the NCOA brand across multiple channels, including web, social, email, and public relations. Prior to working at NCOA, Jean had a freelance writing and editing business and worked for a variety of organizations in the aging field, including LeadingAge.