We had a wonderful virtual celebration of our 2026 winners and now we’re sharing the recording with you! Presenting our winners and hearing them talk about their innovations is one of the most uplifting and inspiring days of the year for us, and we’re so excited to share that experience with you.
Read the meeting transcript here
And we’d like to feature some opening remarks from our Founder Richard Ferry:
“I’m very delighted to be with you. Thank you for joining us today to celebrate 2026 winners for Maude’s Awards. Let me share a little historical perspective before introducing the awards program. Number of people living with Alzheimer’s dementia is vastly growing. Currently, 7.4 million age 65 and older have the illness, with 12.7 million projected by 2050.
The total national cost is equally daunting. Based on current 2026 research by the Alzheimer’s Association, the annual cost of Alzheimer’s in the United States is estimated to be $409 billion, and the cost over the next 24 years is projected to reach just under a trillion dollars. In addition, there are 12.7 million family and unpaid caregivers who contribute an estimated 446 billion in unpaid costs annually, with 59% regrettably of the family caregivers reporting high emotional stress, and 38% of the care partners experiencing high physical stress along with their financial challenges.
Recently, thank God, modern medicine achieved an incredibly important milestone with the development and approval of the first medicines known to alter the course of Alzheimer’s. Two medications that can slow the disease progression in its early stages are now available by prescription. Regrettably, they are not cures for Alzheimer’s but are achieving a major advance in the efforts to change the course of the disease. With this as background, we all asked the $64,000 question, when can we expect a cure? The answer is simply, we just don’t know. While we are waiting for the cure, the quality and availability of care has become paramount. How can we provide care that will support and enhance the quality of life for the many millions living with Alzheimer’s along with their families and care partners?
Seven years ago, I decided to launch Maude’s Awards in honor of my beloved wife, Maude, who passed away on Labor Day 2021, just five years ago, to help find the care while we were waiting for the cure. Maude was a matriarch extraordinaire, community advocate, and a philanthropist, and a long and lasting gift of love for all of those who walked in her path. She’s a devoted wife for 65 years, my global business partner, my best friend, my golfing buddy, the mother of six wonderful children, and the grandmother and great-grandmother of 17 adorable grandkids. She lived her life with grace and elegance and was a strong role model for all who knew her.
I’ve often described her as a wind beneath my wings, one of Bette Midler’s favorite songs. In Maude’s final years, while she lived with dementia, my life was dedicated to finding ways to engage and comfort her during her illness. The awards program is a realization of my prayers and dreams to enhance Maude’s life and the lives of those living with dementia. The program was launched as a result of my constant search to discover new and innovative concepts and programs to benefit the dementia population, in combination with the hiring of a very accomplished and talented executive director, Marilyn Raichle, who herself was a care partner for her mother and father, and the author of a soon to be bestseller, Don’t Walk Away: A Care Partner’s Journey. It’s a joyful, hopeful account of a mother’s final years with dementia supported by a loving and compassionate daughter, Marilyn Raichle.
Since its founding seven years ago, Maude’s Awards has focused on care while we are waiting for the cure. Each year we are thrilled with the discovery of a wide range of new ideas, practices, and programs to present to the dementia community. This year we received a record number of applications, 243, and we are so grateful to the number of individuals and organizations who are willing to share their vision and knowledge for their health and wellbeing of all struggling with dementia, their families, and their care partners. With this information, we publish an annual handbook to benefit the dementia community. Our 2026 book will be available on Maude’s Awards website November of this year.”