MT Connolly is a leading national expert on elder justice who was awarded a MacArthur "genius" grant for her work that has shaped policy, research, and practice for decades. She was the architect of the federal Elder Justice Act, founding head of DOJ’s Elder Justice Initiative, and lead author of the Elder Justice Roadmap. That work, and what she learned from doing research for her book, The Measure of Our Age, led her to co-design the new community-based "RISE" model and to build teams that pilot more holistic, hopeful, and effective ways to reduce trouble and enhance connections in aging for individuals, families, and society. A graduate of Stanford University and Northeastern University School of Law, she lives in Washington, DC.

Longer Bio

Marie-Therese (MT) Connolly is a writer, lawyer, researcher, policy-shaper, and MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Her work focuses on finding better ways to enhance wellbeing, joy, and purpose, and to reduce harm, as we age. 

Book:  She’s the author of the nonfiction book, The Measure of Our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money & Meaning Later in Life, that maps aging in America in a new way—revealing its underestimated challenges and its often-untapped positive potential. Aging, like life, doesn’t stay in any one lane. By chronicling the work of pioneers in medicine, law, services, finance, forensics, and meaning-making, the book provides readers with critical knowledge about the many realms where aging can take us. These insights can help individuals, families and policymakers to better navigate aging and begin long-overdue conversations about longevity.

RISE program and research:  MT is part of a team of practitioners and researchers who created, launched, and study the RISE model, a new holistic advocacy-based, harm reduction program that works with older people in trouble, and if they wish, also with other people in their lives, including those who might be causing them harm. Launched as a two-county pilot in Maine in 2019, RISE was expanded to the entire state in 2021, and currently is being expanded to other states and Canada. The team also is designing and piloting a new substance use component. In 2023, RISE was pilot tested for the first time in a criminal elder financial exploitation prosecution. If the defendant completes the drug court and RISE requirements, (including restorative justice components adapted to elder cases), criminal charges will be dropped. 

Based on the strong RISE pilot data, Maine governor Janet Mills’ proposed 2023 budget included a line item to make RISE a permanent part of the state’s healthy aging system. Evidence suggests that RISE has significant promise as an effective new way to intervene in very challenging and intractable cases of elder mistreatment and “self-neglect.” RISE reduced reinvestigations by 50% in the most intractable APS cases. Workers were very enthusiastic about the program. And most important, the older clients who participated in RISE had extremely positive views of it, with only four percent dropping out. (See a more detailed description of RISE here.) 

Examples of policy work: MT conceived of and was the original architect of the Elder Justice Act, the first comprehensive federal elder abuse law enacted with the Affordable Care Act in 2010. (Chapters 13 and 14 of her book tell the story of the Elder Justice Act.) As founding head of the Department of Justice Elder Justice Initiative, she guided theory and strategy in large federal cases against nursing home chains for fraud, abuse, and neglect and worked on a broad array of policy matters. At DOJ, she also worked with the National Institute of Justice to launch the first elder abuse research program, still in existence today. She has formed several influential groups, written for academic and mainstream publications, and was the lead coauthor of the Elder Justice Roadmap that helped to shape the 2015 White House Conference on Aging, National Center on Elder Abuse priorities, and continues to influence research, education, policy and practice at federal, state and local levels. A graduate of Stanford University and Northeastern University Law School, she lives in Washington, DC.