Sheila has spent most of her professional life in advertising as a Consultant/Associate Creative Director with an expertise in new product development. After 30 years of dedicating her life to this profession, a profound experience changed her life. She became sole caregiver of her ill mother and an emotional crutch for her best friend, Susan, who was diagnosed with cancer. By undertaking this dual role, Sheila truly experienced the tremendous burden caregivers have to endure.

In 1988, she became part of a group of 12 women (mostly strangers to each other) who came together and stayed together for the next three and a half years to care for Susan. The contrast of caring for someone without support to the experience of sharing responsibilities with a group proved to Sheila that this new collaborative approach to caregiving was something of immeasurable value and needed to be shared with caregivers everywhere.

As a result, she and her co-author, Cappy Capossela, documented the systems developed by the group in their book, Share The Care, How To Organize A Group To Care For Someone Who Is Seriously Ill, Simon & Schuster, 1995. Their system takes real family, friends, neighbors, business associates and acquaintances and bonds them into a powerful caregiver "family" and keeps them going even through the tough times. The Share The Care™ modelhas been used in 48 states and 11 countries to help ordinary people deal with all kinds of disabilities, illnesses, or the challenges of aging, and to relieve the emotional, financial, physical and psychological drain on family caregivers and families.

Sheila and Cappy introduced Share The Care to: health professionals at Sloan Kettering; cancer patients at M.D. Anderson Center in Houston; and students of social services at New York University. They appeared on the TV Health Network and gave interviews for radio and print media. In 2001 Share The Care™ was selected by the University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center for use in a program to help women undergoing breast cancer treatment.

In January of 2002, Sheila, tragically, was forced to form yet another caregiver group for her co-author and best friend, Cappy, who had developed a brain tumor and died 10 months later. The result of this third personal caregiving experience led Sheila to create ShareTheCaregiving, Inc. a 501c3 organization and a comprehensive web site (www.sharethecare.org). In 2008, ShareTheCaregiving became a Project of the National Center for Civic Innovation and currently operates under their fiscal umbrella.

In 2004 Sheila revised and updated Share The Care and added 50 pages of new information and ideas pioneered by groups around the country. The second edition was cited by The Library Journal as “One of the Best Consumer Healthcare Books of 2004” and generated articles in: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, AARP Magazine and The Chicago Tribune. In 2008 Share The Care received a Caregiver Friendly award by Today’s Caregiver magazine. And in 2009 Share The Care’s New York City Program was cited for an Achievement Award for Cross-generational Caregiving by the New York State Coalition for the Aging and the Statewide Caregiving & Respite Coalition of New York.

Sheila lectures and leads professional trainings throughout the US and Canada. She has served on the Executive Committee of the NYC Family Caregiver Coalition and is a member of the American Society on Aging, and the National Speakers Association. She sits on the HealthCare Chaplaincy’s Residence Advisory Committee for a Palliative Care Campus. In 2012 EmblemHealth invited Share The Care™ to be a founding member and Co-Chair of the NYC Partnership 4 Family Caregiving Corps.

In 2011, Sheila was named (out of over 2,100 submissions) one of 10 L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth Honorees for her achievements and outstanding commitment to community service. In 2012, Sheila was a winner in the Marigold “Ideas For Good” Contest sponsored by Encore.org and Road Scholar. She was named a 2012 Local Lady Godiva Honoree by Godiva Chocolatier. Most recently, Sheila received the DAILY POINT OF LIGHT AWARD, established by President George H. W. Bush and Points of Light Institute CEO, Michelle Nunn, for her work to create meaningful change in communities across America.

Empowerment, Healthcare, Stress, Women's Health, Aging, Health, Teamwork & Teambuilding, Non-Profit & Association, Audience activity, Inspirational, Educational, informative, Life-changing,