CT Hospice says good-bye to CEO Barbara Pearce, welcomes successor

Whenever Barbara Pearce was having a bad day during her years as president and CEO of Connecticut Hospice, she thought of the person on the floor below her.

“I reminded myself that person might be waking up for the last time, and that really put things into perspective,” she told a gathering of 265 at last Saturday’s Bloom Gala celebrating Pearce’s six years of service and welcoming to the helm newly appointed president and CEO Sylvia Allais, a nurse clinician and recognized leader in the hospice field.

The changing of the guard occurred in January with Pearce’s retirement.

Pearce recalled a meeting early in 2019 when CT Hospice board chair Unk Daros, formerly Branford first selectman, introduced her to Joe Mooney, the newly appointed interim CFO. Daros told them of the steep fiscal challenges the first hospice in the nation—“the mothership,” Pearce has called it—was facing.

“Joe and I agreed we could work together and we agreed that it would take six months, maybe a year,” said Pearce, amid the scenic backdrop of Long Island Sound on a picture-perfect evening on the Double Beach campus. Those six months would become six years.

In the top-to-bottom reorganization that followed in the next year, Pearce and her team “dove straight in,” said CT Hospice board chair William Kosturko, streamlining operations and reducing operating costs, all toward restoring the international reputation that CT Hospice enjoyed in its medical and palliative services.

Then came the pandemic, and the exodus of employees and shifting guidance on everything from PPE to close contacts to isolation times. Pearce’s team pivoted, Kosturko said. They opened CT Hospice as a vaccination site, providing the general public with a look at what the institution was all about. And they offered 52 beds to Yale New Haven Health for overflow patients “at a time when they were sorely needed,” he said.

In the years since, he said, she and her team established a palliative care clinic, and launched the GUIDE dementia care program, aimed at affording people living with dementia and their caregivers with tools toward a better quality of life.

“There’s an old saying that there’s no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit for it,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), praising Pearce for stepping aside from her position as CEO of Pearce Real Estate when “Hospice’s existence was quite literally threatened.”

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-3) called Pearce “a force of nature.” She thanked her for reinforcing CT Hospice’s standing as “the national model of care that has inspired thousands of similar programs.”

Pearce, who will return to her previous position as head of Pearce Real Estate, expressed gratitude to the CT Hospice board and staff, as well as the patients and families, for teaching her “to understand the most important things in life.”

At CT Hospice, “you can help people when no one else can,” she said, as a gull cawed in the evening sky. “They’ve given up on curative treatments, on getting better, and they just want to pass with grace and dignity in the company of those they love.”

The mission of CT Hospice, one that hasn’t changed for the 51 years of its existence, is simple. “We don’t want anyone to die alone, afraid, or in pain,” she said. “That’s not an easy thing to do given the government we have, the audits we undergo, the hardships we face, but we do it.”

Incoming president and CEO Sylvia Allais, who arrived at CT Hospice from her position as executive director at HomeCare and Hospice of the Valley in Edwards, Colorado, lauded Pearce for coming in at “just the right time,” ensuring the institution's survival, and setting it on the path to success.

Allais, who spent 11 years at CT Hospice in nursing and supervisory roles beginning in 2004, pledged to remain true to the organization’s mission that goes back to its founding in 1974, one that, she said, "always puts patients and families first, surrounding them with staff and volunteers in a culture of safety, supported by competent and understanding administration.”

She closed with a statement of a mother whose daughter was recently an inpatient at CT Hospice. "When we got to this place, I knew she was safe," she told Allais.

And that, said CT Hospice's new leader, "is what this place is: a safe harbor for patients and families."

To donate to CT Hospice, visit www.hospice.com or call the Development Office at 203-315-7684.