Michael D. Shmerling ’73 named 2022 Distinguished Alumnus

USN honored the alumnus and he addressed soon-to-be graduates during Convocation in May 2022.
By Leigh Ivey Hicks ’05, Alumni Director
 
Mike Shmerling knew from an early age that he wanted to be an accountant — a successful accountant, in his words. Following his graduation from Peabody Demonstration School, Shmerling chose the University of Oklahoma and became a Certified Public Accountant, beginning in the Nashville office of Ernst & Ernst, now Ernst & Young. He enjoyed nearly two decades as a CPA at EY and his own firms.

As he became involved with companies and nonprofits around Nashville, Shmerling began to feel that his work lacked a sense of challenge and he pivoted to pursue entrepreneurship. He ultimately founded or cofounded 11 businesses and sold four of them to publicly traded companies.

“It took me decades to learn the distinction between success and purpose,” Shmerling told the Class of 2022 and their families during Convocation. “While [entrepreneurship] allowed me to achieve success, I still had not satisfied my desire to find true purpose.”

Instead, his purpose found him when his father Abe Shmerling began to demonstrate symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Mike Shmerling’s three siblings, professionals in the fields of medicine and social work, had some sense of what to expect when it came time to find long-term care. As a businessman, Shmerling was disturbed to discover that poor facility conditions and chronic boredom were endemic to the system. He wanted a better option. 

Shmerling found that his business background had prepared him well for the challenge of building a center of excellence in care for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. With the help of his wife Lisa, sister Judy, and a handpicked team of experts he established Abe’s Garden, a senior community in Belle Meade with 42 residents and day care.

As Shmerling describes Abe’s Garden, like PDS it was established as a center of excellence committed to becoming a model of best practices and lessons learned as residents perceived love. Beginning with the simple guiding framework to “make a great day for the people who call these places home,” Shmerling and his team visited world-renowned Alzheimer’s and memory care facilities to observe both their common and distinguishing operational and programmatic features. 

“[The importance of] an established relationship with a major medical academic institution informed our relationship with Vanderbilt University School of Medicine; storytelling programs where the storyteller was just as important as the story being told; groundbreaking pet therapy programs; these are places where people come to live, not to die,” Shmerling said. “We now happily share our playbook with anyone who wishes to see it.”

Through Abe’s Garden, he has established an internationally recognized, replicable model for senior life, supporting brain health, wellness, and purposeful living. The 2020 World Alzheimer’s Report called it a “paradigm-shifting environment.” 

“It draws attention from all quarters — even American Institute of CPA’s 150,000 plus members recognized the difference he has made with their national Public Service Award,” noted Director Vince Durnan upon conferring the award. “If it were not so intimidating, I’d make the comparison to USN at its best. We can’t fix education at scale or really even make that great a difference necessarily, but we can do something with our moment, about something we see needs doing, and we could look to Mike Shmerling … as an example. Having done well, he chose to do good.”

Shmerling served the USN Board of Trustees from 1996 to 2008, including one term as President and as co-chair for the Campaign for Arts & Letters. Shmerling, an Emeritus Trustee, is parent of alumni Andy Shmerling ’99, Mollie Shmerling Perry ’03, and Katie Shmerling Wayne ’05 and has five grandchildren, including USN students David ’32, Jack ’33, and Abby ’35.

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the summer 2022 edition of 2000 Edgehill, the magazine of Peabody Demonstration School and University School of Nashville.






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