John Diffey, President of The Kendal Corporation, Receives American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging's Highest Honor

From the AAHSA website 2006:

"AAHSA takes great pride in recognizing individuals and organizations that are advancing the vision of healthy, affordable, ethical aging services through their commitment to Quality First. Our award winners combine leadership, creativity and commitment to make great strides in the field. Through these awards, AAHSA pays tribute to their work and offers public recognition from their peers. We hope that these award winners will inspire others to achieve ever-higher levels of excellence and public trust."

"As president and CEO of The Kendal Corporation, John Diffey has built on that organization’s long history of exemplary service to the general public and the profession of senior services.  He and Kendal have always been at the forefront of working with PANPHA and AAHSA to help build the quality and services that not-for-profit providers bring to their residents. Under John Diffey’s leadership, Kendal’s outreach and sustained assistance to Lambeth House in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was extraordinary in one sense, and yet typical of the type of capable, caring organization he has fostered.  As Diffey noted in acknowledging Kendal’s receipt of the 2006 Gulf States’ Volunteer of the Year Award, “Any of us who has been in this extended family of caring organizations for any length of time has experienced both times of great personal and professional need and times when there were opportunities to help. We have been as glad to be of help this time as we have been glad to receive help in other times.”

"Diffey is a past member of the AAHSA board and House of Delegates, has chaired numerous committees for AAHSA, and served as a commissioner and officer of the Continuing Care Accreditation Commission.  He has been an active leader in both PANPHA and NCANPHA, AAHSA’s Pennsylvania and North Carolina state partners, and served the latter as president. He has held government appointments to long-term care councils in both states and, in 2005, was a delegate to the White House Conference on Aging.  He currently co-chairs the professional development initiative known as Leadership AAHSA."

"John Diffey is widely respected as a national leader whose organization has been a standard-setting pioneer in the continuing care retirement community field and resident-centered care.  Time and again, he and Kendal have reached out with compassion, empathy and the desire to support the AAHSA community."

AAHSA, with headquarters in the Nation's Capital, is the professional organization representing over 5,500 retirement and long term care, multi and single site, providers nationwide.  In reacting to the announcement about this award, John Diffey commented, “As there have only been two CEO’s of The Kendal Corporation during its 33 year history, and both have received AAHSA’s top honor, it has as much to do with Kendal’s culture as it does with its leadership.”

Read Kendal's press release.   Read More About Kendal's Relationship with Lambeth House.