In the United States, the population aged 65 and older was 57.8 million in 2022 and is projected to grow to 82 million by 2050 (in Richmond, one in five adults is currently over 65). Our community of older adults is growing — and getting older shouldn’t mean seeing your quality of life go down or fading into the background of society.
Alexa van Aartrijk has built her career around championing and empowering older adults.
As annual fund and event manager with The Span Center — a nonprofit that provides services to older adults, people with disabilities and caregivers — van Aartrijk leads fundraising initiatives that connect people with the support they need. From food delivery and transportation to affordable housing and opportunities for socializing, these simple services make a massive difference in people’s lives.
A member of the Gerontology Advisory Board and the Virginia Coalition for the Prevention of Elder Abuse (VCPEA), van Aartrijk honed her passion studying gerontology at Virginia Commonwealth University, but her dedication to supporting older adults began when she worked in an assisted living home.
“Working in long-term care, I started to identify flaws in the way we care for older adults,” she says. “Our systems of care have to be powered by really compassionate people, and if they’re not, the flaws come out. But ageism is socially constructed, which means we can unlearn it. I want to be a part of the change that makes Richmond a healthy, safe, fun place to grow old.”
Prior to her current role, she led the development and expansion of a kinship care program in Chesterfield, which supports grandparents and relatives raising children when their parents can no longer care for them. Recognizing the unique challenges these caregivers face — often stepping into parental roles with little notice — she brought school personnel, social workers, and community agencies together to create Kinship Resource Fairs, where families can access everything from legal aid and mental health services to educational support.
In addition to meeting the practical needs of older adults, van Aartrijk also works to celebrate the importance of their voices and experiences. With the goal of preserving the wisdom of the older members of the local community, she helped create “Home is Everything,” a regional oral history project where centenarians were interviewed about what home, identity, and belonging mean to them.
In the future, she hopes to continue strengthening Richmond’s network of support for older adults. In one of her more recent initiatives, she made progress on bridging the gap between community needs and policy action by organizing a legislative breakfast attended by local, state and federal policymakers to discuss the future of aging services. She plans to make it the first of many, in her continued effort to ensure the Richmond community’s older population remains seen.
“Older adults are dynamic, they’re interested in learning, and negative stereotypes impact things like policy and projects we fund,” she says. “Everyone at every age is multi-dimensional, and having more empathy would solve a lot of issues.”
