When Lara Shea was a student at ConVal High School, she decided to leave her job in the dining room at Scott-Farrar to fill a similar role at the then-brand-new RiverMead facility. Little did she know back then that more than two decades later, she’d make the same move.
Only this time, Shea wasn’t working in the dining room at Scott-Farrar. Rather for the last four-plus years, the Peterborough native and 1997 ConVal graduate, has served in the role of executive director of Scott-Farrar, the first and only since the retirement living facility with a history that stretches back more than a century reopened following a complete rebuild. On June 1, Shea officially began her new role as CEO of RiverMead.
“It’s kind of a full-circle moment,” Shea said. “I really enjoyed my time here. It was always such a special memory and I remember it quite fondly.”
She had been working in long-term care in Massachusetts for quite a few years, moving her way up the ranks at different facilities when the opportunity to lead Scott-Farrar’s reopening came about.
“It was a unique experience. Long-term care facilities don’t open up every day,” Shea said. And the chance to come back to her hometown was, to say the least, intriguing.
While she had never been the top administrator for a facility, she had been preparing for that moment for years and Scott-Farrar was the perfect size for her first job leading an organization.
“I really wasn’t looking to make a move or go anywhere else,” Shea said. “I was enjoying being at Scott-Farrar so much. I knew at some point I’d want to take that next step in my career, but I wasn’t necessarily looking for it yet.”
But when the position of CEO of RiverMead opened up following the announcement of Bill James’s plan to retire in the spring of 2021, Shea said it was something she had to explore.
“I didn’t want to miss the opportunity,” Shea said. “It’s a real career step for me.”
Applying came with pause considering that like every long-term facility she was in the midst of figuring out how to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
“At the time my biggest fear was leaving Scott-Farrar. I was very hesitant to leave mid-pandemic,” Shea said. Thankfully the search for James’s replacement was one that took a considerable amount of time. Her first interview came in October, but was put on hold as coronavirus cases rose in the state and the vaccine rollout began and didn’t restart until March. “The timing worked out well,” she said.
One of the first calls she received upon being offered the job in March was from James. The two had grown close during the last four-plus years, while both leading the Peterborough communities. She had a unique perspective of what RiverMead was all about and that’s what attracted her to the position.
“It’s a place that really respects its employees and residents,” Shea said.
And it’s a place where Shea sees herself being for many years to come.
“It felt like the next logical step. I can never predict the future, but I suspect for me, this will the final stop for my career,” she said. “Philosophically it’s a perfect match. This is exactly where I’d hope I’d land.”
Her first week on the job was filled with receptions with residents, who are wearing name tags for the month of June to help her get to know everyone, meeting with staff and committees and getting to know her way around the community.
“Everyone’s been so gracious and welcoming,” she said. “But it was very bittersweet. Even today I still feel very connected to Scott-Farrar. It was a very special place to be.”
Shea said the difference in scale between the two communities – from 70 residents to around 300 – is the biggest adjustment.
“And I’ll be learning the RiverMead culture and how the operations work,” she said. “It was a leap for me to go from a smaller community to a larger one.” She wants to take her time to integrate herself before really jumping into the bigger picture. One thing she does have on her side is that James is only a phone call away. “That institutional knowledge, to be able to have that, I’m deeply appreciative of that.”
She describes RiverMead as a future-focused organization and it’s something she thinks about a lot.
“Operating in the today is great and you need to do it well,” Shea said. “But where is long-term care going? What do future generations of residents look like? What do future generations of staff look like?”
Like most teenagers, Shea thought everything good in her future would be somewhere else, away from the town she grew up in. Despite working at both communities in high school, Shea wasn’t thinking about working in the field for the rest of her life.
“There are very few people that think of long-term care as a career opportunity in high school or college,” Shea said. In high school she wanted to be an elementary school teacher. She interned at Peterborough Elementary School and enjoyed it. But her freshman year of college she did another internship and it just wasn’t quite right. She switched her major to public relations, but coincidentally worked at a nursing home as an activities assistant and loved it.
After a few years working for a graphics design and publishing company, Shea had a moment of clarity.
“I said this isn’t what I want to do,” she said. So off she went to Lasell College for a graduate degree in eldercare administration. It led to a job as a marketing assistant and then various other roles in admissions, director of memory care units at other facilities and eventually a position as assistant executive director – all in Massachusetts – before leaving for Scott-Farrar.
“It took a few years to get a foot hold that long-term care is a career path,” she said. “And I feel lucky I fell into a career path that had a lot of growth opportunity.”
In September of last year, Shea began working at Franklin Pierce University as an adjunct professor. She taught one class per semester – intro to healthcare management in the fall and healthcare systems management and quality in the spring – and “it pulled me back to that global view of looking at healthcare.” It also brought her back to that initial career interest.
“I really enjoyed the students and the experience of teaching,” she said. “I hope the students find it as interesting as I do.”
The idea of coming back to Peterborough crept into her mind as she was living and working in Massachusetts. She was close enough to visit any time, but there was something about her hometown that was calling.
“It’s a unique town and a unique region. People are so invested in Peterborough,” she said.
Her sister Megan Somero lives in New Ipswich and her other sister Nicole MacStay is the town administrator for Peterborough.
“She’s got the big town and I’ve got the little town,” Shea joked.
Her parents Ray and Nadia MacStay still live in Peterborough after moving to town more than three decades ago. And now she lives in town with her husband Jamieson, who is a firefighter and paramedic in Sterling, Massachusetts and film producer on the side. The two met in the fall of 2016, not long after she began at Scott-Farrar and were married two years later.
They are both outdoor enthusiasts, enjoying camping and hikes in the woods. Her favorite spots in Peterborough are the trails beyond the recycling center, MacDowell Dam and the Evans Flats Trail.
“All year round I like to be outside as much as I can,” Shea said. That includes snowboarding and snowshoeing.
She likes to knit and travel, spending a week in Iceland with Jamieson before starting at RiverMead. They followed the Ring Road and upon the encouragement of others, hiked up to see a volcano erupt every 10 minutes in 70-mile-per-hour winds.
“That was an incredible experience. Felt like once in a lifetime,” Shea said. “We watched it over and over.”
And now that she’s settled into her new job, Shea is set to move to a new house where she can actually see her old office at Scott-Farrar. Those views will evoke happy memories and bittersweet thoughts, but just like when she made the change in high school, Shea knows the move from one Peterborough community to another was the right one. Only this time, she plans on staying for years to come.