After decades in public health and healthcare leadership, Melanie Brim is still focused on one central idea: connection. Through her work with AgeAlive, she is helping reshape how people think about aging—on campus and beyond.
A former Michigan State University student, Brim now serves as a consultant with AgeAlive and the IMPART Alliance, where she supports strategic planning, organizational priorities and long-term sustainability. A key part of her work also includes helping Michigan State maintain its age-friendly university designation and prepare for its redesignation in 2028.
“A lot of what I do is helping think about where the organization wants to go, what we should be working on, what our priorities are,” Brim said.
The age-friendly university initiative focuses on making higher education more inclusive of people at all stages of life.
“It’s really about being inclusive of older adults,” Brim said. “We need to change the definition of who a student is. It’s not just 18 to 25—it’s everybody.”
Brim’s path into this work was shaped by a long career in healthcare and a few pivotal moments along the way. Before joining AgeAlive, she served as president and CEO of the Michigan Health Council and spent more than 20 years working for the state of Michigan, including as senior deputy director of public health.
She traces the start of that career back to her time as a student working at Olin Health Center on MSU’s campus.
“I had no idea what I was going to do,” Brim said. “And someone asked me if I had ever thought about a career in medical record administration.”
That single conversation changed everything.
“It was one piece of information from a person that changed the trajectory of my life,” she said.
Her connection to Michigan State also made AgeAlive a natural fit.
“My dad worked at MSU most of his life, and I started my work career at MSU as a student,” Brim said. “I loved the idea of supporting the university”
Over the past eight years, Brim has become especially interested in intergenerational programming, which brings together younger and older adults in meaningful ways.
“Both young adults and older adults experience surprisingly similar things, like loneliness and isolation,” she said. “It’s a wonderful way to bring the wisdom from older adults to share with younger adults.”
That belief is deeply personal. Brim’s 28-year-old daughter, a Paralympic athlete and gold medalist, became a quadriplegic as a young adult and has since navigated significant health challenges. Watching her daughter’s resilience has shaped how Brim approaches both life and her work.
“Her resilience, her ability to go on and win, her survival—her story,” Brim said. “It makes me appreciate that nothing is overwhelming. We can all handle almost anything that’s dealt to us.”
Brim said that relationship also reflects the kind of intergenerational connection she values in her work.
“She helps keep me young,” Brim said. “There’s value in both directions—older adults supporting younger adults and younger adults helping older adults stay engaged.”
Brim works to challenge outdated assumptions about aging, emphasizing the valuable contributions older adults continue to make to their communities, workplaces and families.
“We get written off as no longer able to contribute,” she said. “And that’s not true.”
She emphasized that aging looks different for everyone and that it can bring a new sense of freedom rather than limitation.
“One 70-year-old is not the same as another 70-year-old,” Brim said. “We all age very differently.”
“There’s this misconception that getting older is an endpoint,” she added. “It’s really not—it’s a beginning point.”
Recently, Brim attended the first North American Age-Friendly University Summit on behalf of MSU, where she connected with institutions across the United States and Canada working toward similar goals.
“It was really enlightening and very inspiring,” she said. “I came back with lots of ideas and things I think we should be doing.”
Looking ahead, Brim hopes to expand AgeAlive’s impact by strengthening connections between the university and the broader community.
“How do we take what we study and make it real?” she said. “How do we take it to the community and actually improve people’s lives?”
For Brim, the answer continues to come back to connection—between generations, experiences and perspectives—and making sure people of all ages feel valued and included.