Speaker Category: Panelists

Carole Osero-Ageng’o is a respected, multilingual human rights lawyer and leader. She is an excellent negotiator, people connector, mentor, and policy influencer with broad regional and global experience. 

As the Africa regional representative at HelpAge International, she influences policy advocacy around aging, women’s rights, sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR), gender, governance, climate change, and conflict management. She also leads HelpAge International’s strategic global initiatives for the rights, well-being, and dignity of older persons.  

Previously, Osero-Ageng’o was the associate regional director for policy and advocacy at Planned Parenthood Global, senior program officer for Africa at the International Women’s Program of the Open Society Foundations, program officer for Africa at Equality Now, and legal counsel for the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya.  She started her career as a litigation and conveyancing lawyer in Kenya.

Osero-Ageng’o holds an LL. B (Hons) and an MA in International Conflict Management from the University of Nairobi. She also has a diploma in the Equal Status and Human Rights of Women from the University of Lund in Sweden. She works in English, French, German, Kiswahili, Dholuo, with fair knowledge of Gikuyu and Spanish.

Twitter Handle: @agengocarole

Carolyn Cooper is New Zealand’s first Aged Care Commissioner. She was appointed in March 2022 to provide strategic oversight of health and disability services for older people in all settings. In addition to being a statutory decision maker on complaints about care provided to older people, Carolyn strongly advocates for older people’s rights to quality health and disability services to support them to age well. Her 40-year career spans governance, executive and clinical leaderships roles across the public and private sector in New Zealand and Australia. Previously, she was the managing director and lead nurse for Bupa Villages and Care New Zealand, which supports more than 5,500 senior residents nation-wide. Carolyn began her career as a registered general and obstetrics nurse and has since held leadership positions across the health sector in aged care and hospital and specialist services. She is passionate about using innovation and collaboration as tools to achieve great quality of care and life for older people. She brings to her roles her lived experience caring for older people as a daughter and niece. 

Armed with a bachelor of social work degree, Susan Walsh began her career as a frontline social worker in mental health. Soon she realized that to really help people she needed to have an impact at the decision-making level. She completed her master of social work degree, specializing in policy, from the University of Toronto and spent 31 years in progressive leadership positions within numerous departments of the Newfoundland and Labrador provincial government focused on mental health, geriatrics, disabilities, child welfare, income support, indigenous services, municipal affairs and executive council. Walsh led several reform initiatives and served on various provincial and national boards. Her most recent role, prior to her appointment as Newfoundland and Labrador’s Seniors’ Advocate in June of 2022, was deputy minister of the Department of Children, Seniors and Social Development. She was also the provincial lead deputy minister for the Federal/Provincial/Territorial National Committee on Social Services responsible for seniors, income support, and child welfare in the country. 

After a 30-year career inside the “system”, Susan finally realized the secret to creating real change and entered the world of advocacy. Susan has a unique perspective on the role of seniors’ advocacy and how to achieve it.