Sheri Peifer – President and CEO, Eskaton
As president and CEO of Eskaton, the largest Northern California-based nonprofit senior living provider, Sheri Peifer knows a thing or two about today’s aging populace. She tries to match their boldness with her own in creating and running communities where older adults can live with purpose and joy.
Peifer always liked being around older people. Growing up on Philadelphia’s Main Line, she learned how to crochet from an 88-year-old neighbor, and she found older adults refreshing and authentic. “They’re comfortable in their own skin,” says Peifer. “We become more ourselves as we age.”
Raised in a musical family (her parents were both music educators), Peifer sang and played the piano and clarinet. She met her husband, Scott, at Messiah University, a private college in Pennsylvania. After graduating, they followed friends to Lodi. While he got his graduate degree, she worked for a senior living company in the San Joaquin Valley. By the time she was 25, she was an administrator, overseeing a staff of 85 (many of them twice her age), while going to Sacramento State for a master’s in gerontology. It wasn’t easy, she says, recalling that period as one of her “crying times.”
The couple moved back east, but after a few years they missed California and returned to Sacramento. Setting her sights on working for Eskaton, Peifer wrote her own job description focused on strategic planning, market feasibility and operations. Hired in 2005, she was named VP of strategic planning two years later.