Dianne H. Timmering, MFA, MBA, CNA is an author, entrepreneur and spiritual leader. She serves as the Vice President of Spirituality for Signature HealthCARE, a post-acute and long-term care company based in Louisville, KY.
With Signature CEO Joe Steier, she cofounded, created and leads one of the largest for-profit, multi-faith Departments of Spirituality in the nation.
The Signature Spirituality Department grew out of a grassroots movement into a nationally recognized program, and offers an innovative input that is not only a service of prayer, but an intervention of healing. The program is built upon the foundation of respect and offers the freedom to celebrate one’s own faith tradition and discovery of purpose. This unique model has proven its added value partly through a qualitative and sustainable ROI that includes improved outcomes via an integrated care delivery model with the Clinical and Therapy teams, as well as impacting employee recruitment and retention. Her vision is a service of complete experience and hope in medicine as a core competency in the care delivery system. Currently, more than 90 full-time chaplains serve approximately 9,000 residents and 15,000 employees.
Dianne sees spirituality as a new and ‘now’ solution to assess and heal spiritual pain and/or physical sickness with minimal overhead and as a unique medical input of treatment as well as prevention. This thriving spiritual movement has been nationally recognized as an innovative paradigm shift in the long-term care delivery system and featured in publications such as Long-Term Living magazine, Business First Weekly, the Louisville Courier Journal, the Indianapolis Star, the Oregonian, Louisville Magazine, the Cincinnati Inquirer, Delaware Online, the Newark Advocate and others. In 2013 Signature HealthCARE was named to Modern Healthcare Magazine’s annual list of “Best Places to Work In Healthcare”, an honor bestowed on only 100 organizations nationwide each year. Her departmental brand, “Endless Hope”, which is used as both a statement of purpose as well as a vision of wellness, promotes spirituality as a value-added core competency to the overall care delivery process.
Expanding upon “Endless Hope”, many saw the need for assistance in faith beyond the element of prayer. Therefore, she and others co-created and launched in 2009 the philanthropic Compassion Fund in order to better serve stakeholders and community members when unfortunate crisis strikes. In 2010 she published her first White Paper entitled “Spirituality and Its Value-added Impact” in LTC Review, Vol. 1 #4 wherein she discusses the efficacy and value-added aspects of spiritual interventions. Also in 2010 she co-created and designed a companywide program on Spiritual and Emotional Intelligence, a curriculum encouraging creative pursuits, individual purpose and discernment. She also pioneered the Interfaith Lunch and Learn Series, an initiative that fosters spiritual awareness, enhanced understanding, friendship and a collaborative work environment by creating a bridge of respect, drawing people nearer to one another, breaking down barriers, eradicating misperceptions, and fostering an environment where there is no fear of our differences.
Dianne has presented the Signature model along with Joe Steier, President and CEO of Signature HealthCARE, at the Louisville Festival of Faiths, the Society for Human Resource Management, the Tyson Center for Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace and other organizations. She appeared on the cover of Louisville Magazine in December 2010 when Signature was selected as a best place to work in Louisville, KY. She also appeared with Joe Steier in September 2011 speaking to 200 Human Resource executives discussing “God in the Workplace”. Her blog article about her participation in the 2013 CXO Leadership summit was retweeted by Conference organizers to over 300 healthcare leaders. Dianne is an Ambassador for the Health Enterprises Network based in Louisville, KY and is on the board of Signature HomeNOW and Silver Angels.
Previously, Dianne traveled the world as an Advance Representative for President George Herbert Walker Bush, serving as an international liaison while promoting U.S. messaging and policy abroad. She was the editor of the 1989 Inaugural Guidebook for President George H. W. Bush. She also served as a strategic scheduler for Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole during his first presidential bid. As a consultant and sole proprietor for over twenty years, she has worked with numerous clients as a fundraising and strategic planning consultant, raising millions of dollars for a variety of political, national, and not-for-profit clients. Her entrepreneurial experience includes serving as President of a local restaurant franchise in Louisville, KY.
Dianne is a graduate of Vanderbilt University (cum laude, Nashville, TN) with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and Business, and has a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Fiction from Spalding University in Louisville, KY. She received her Executive MBA in Health Sector Management and Policy at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. She has also been involved with Junior Achievement and is a former Court Appointed Special Advocate volunteer. She currently serves on the Boards for Restorative Justice Louisville and the Compassion Fund and is involved in the Compassionate Cities Louisville Campaign as well as the Executive Leadership Team for the American Heart Association. She has also achieved her license as a Clinical Nursing Assistant (CNA).
In 2009, she co-authored with E. Joseph Steier (President & CEO, Signature HealthCARE) her first work of non-fiction entitled My God! Our God?. She hopes to publish Guardian Moon, her first work of fiction, in 2015.
Dianne can be reached via her website www.diannetimmering.com, by email at [email protected] or by phone at (561) 301-7401.