As Co-Founder of Spirituality and Vice President of Legislative and Government Affairs for Signature HealthCARE, the 7th largest Skilled Nursing Facility provider in the nation based in Louisville, KY, she co-founded (along with Signature CEO Joe Steier), created and led one of the largest for-profit, multi-faith Departments of Spirituality in the nation. As Vice President of Legislative Affairs and Health Policy, she has also led the Legislative affairs team, another real opportunity for innovative solutions, linking healthcare policy, portents of risk, regulatory impact, and legislative momentum to the local marketplace and national business strategic focus. A systems thinker, she has the pounding quest to create, embrace risk, test knowledge, and look outside, inside the balance of logic and imagination to build, sustain, scale, transform.
In 2006, the Signature Spirituality Pillar grew out of a grassroots movement into a nationally recognized innovation, and, The Pillar offers an input that is not only a service of prayer, but an intervention of healing. This unique model has proven its added value partly through a qualitative and quantitative process 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 hope in medicine as a core competency in the care delivery system. At one point, under her executive leadership, more than 125 full-time chaplains were serving approximately 10,000 residents and 19,000 employees.
Dianne sees spirituality as a ‘now’ solution to assess and heal spiritual pain and 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 at the Tyson Center for Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace, the University of Kentucky Summer Series on Aging and along with Signature CEO Joe Steier at the 2012 Louisville Festival of Faiths. 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 to discuss with 200 Human Resource executives the topic of “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
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. 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 dtimmering@signaturehealthcarellc.com or by phone at (561) 301-7401.
A list of clients Dianne has worked with includes:
Monster.com/ Making It Count (Cincinnati, OH)
The Economic Strategy Institute (Washington, DC)
The Coalition for Service Industries (Washington, DC)
The American Tort Reform Association (Washington, DC)
Smith Fairfield (Alexandria, VA)
1998 US Conference of Mayors (Reno, NV)
Republican Party of Kentucky (Frankfort, KY)
National Policy Forum (Washington, DC)
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) (Washington, DC)
Campaign America (Scottsdale, AZ)
Creative Alliance (Louisville, KY)
Waste Management of Greater Washington (Temple Hills, MD)
Bradley University’s Salute to Bob Michel (Washington, DC)
With Pangburn & Associates:
The Friends of the National Arboretum (Washington, DC)
Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce (Washington, DC)
Republican Governors Association (Washington, DC)
National Association of Police Organizations, Saluting America’s Top Cops (Washington, DC)
The US-ASEAN Council (Washington, DC)
National Republican Congressional Committee/ National Republican Senatorial Committee (Washington, DC)
Bush Quayle 1988/ 1992 (Washington, DC)
Tech-Knowledge International, Defense Conversion Hearings (Long Beach, CA)
The Artemis Project (Washington, DC)
Alta International (Washington, DC)
Public Affairs Group/ the Center for the Study of the Presidency (Washington, DC)
Renew America (a non-profit environmental group) (Washington, DC)
“Spirituality is a sprouting field of innovation, the element of divine hope which unleashes boldness and the passion of purpose, creative acceleration and the desire to learn and pursue human possibility. It is what glues the colorful palette of the business into the fabric and greatness of its people and whereas in natural concordance, the culture thrives.”
– Dianne H. Timmering, MFA, MBA, CNA is an author, entrepreneur, and innovator. She is Spirituality Co-Founder & VP/Legislative Affairs for Signature HealthCARE.
Dianne H. Timmering 