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M.T. Connolly, JD (she/her/hers)

Adjunct Professor
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California, United States

MT Connolly is author of the 2023 nonfiction book, "The Measure of Our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money and Meaning Later in Life." The book chronicles the evolution of the elder justice field and traces the work of pioneers in medicine, research, law, services, finance, advocacy, policy, and culture-change. The book tells compelling stories to illuminate the complex challenges and gifts of aging, and how change happens, in hopes of starting more conversations about aging and caregiving among family members, policymakers, experts, and arbiters of culture. MT was awarded a MacArthur "genius" grant for work including being the founding head of DOJ’s Elder Justice Initiative, co-founder of NIJ’s elder justice research program, and architect of the federal Elder Justice Act. She was also the lead author of the Elder Justice Roadmap, a document informed by hundreds of stakeholders that set priorities for the field. Her elder justice efforts and disappointments, and what she learned from research for her book, led her to work with colleagues to co-design and pilot test the new community-based "RISE" model that provides more holistic and person-centered responses to elder mistreatment and “self-neglect." (That story is also included in the book.) RISE was first pilot-tested with APS cases in two Maine counties and later expanded statewide. It is currently being studied as it is adapted to other issues (like substance use), other systems (like criminal justice), and other locations, including several additional US states as well as creation of a free-standing program in Canada (which has no APS program). Based on promising pilot data, Maine in 2023 enacted new legislation making RISE a permanent (and funded) part of the state’s healthy aging programs. A graduate of Stanford University and Northeastern University School of Law, MT lives in Washington, DC.

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