Shauna Sweeney, Founder of tendercare, Named 2026 John Hopper Impact Award Winner

CHICAGO, July 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Ziegler, a specialty investment bank, and the Ziegler Link-age Funds are pleased to announce Shauna Sweeney, founder and CEO of tendercare, as the recipient of the 2026 John Hopper Impact Award. The announcement was made during the What's Next Longevity Venture Summit in Berkeley, California, hosted by Mary Furlong & Associates.

Now in its fourth year, the John Hopper Impact Award honors an exceptional entrepreneur whose work is transforming the aging experience through innovative, scalable solutions. This year's award focused on the theme of Empowered Care, recognizing those advancing the independence, dignity, and agency of older adults and the care teams who support them.

"Shauna Sweeney has done something rare, turning one of the most chaotic moments in family life into one where families actually feel supported and in control," said Katie Schmitz, Managing Partner of the Ziegler Link-age Funds. "tendercare is Empowered Care in action, and Shauna is exactly the kind of entrepreneur this award was created to recognize."

"When my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's 12 years ago, walking out of the doctor's office felt like stepping off a cliff. There was no infrastructure in place to catch us and help us understand the many ways we'd need to adapt, plan, and find elder care professionals across legal, financial, daily logistics, and more. I built tendercare to be the operating system for how America ages, the front door to elder care my family didn't have. This award is a recognition that families deserve serious innovation," said Sweeney.

tendercare is an AI-enabled aging care infrastructure platform designed to transform the chaos of a new diagnosis or hospital discharge into a clear, actionable care plan, within minutes. Built by Shauna Sweeney, who has been the primary caregiver for her father through his Alzheimer's for more than a decade, tendercare addresses the whole spectrum of aging.

The platform connects families to vetted local providers across 20+ elder care categories, from home care to legal to financial, as well as Medicare-funded programs, and helps them prepare for and manage the extensive needs that come with aging. The company's tenderID emergency information system gives first responders instant access to critical medical information and alerts families, went viral upon launch, generating 150,000 social media engagements in its first 24 hours and thousands of orders from families across the country.

"Shauna is the kind of founder who changes an industry not by disrupting it from the outside, but by understanding it from the inside," added Mary Furlong, CEO of Mary Furlong & Associates. "She lived this problem before she solved it, and that depth of understanding shows in everything tendercare does. It's exactly what the aging space needs more of."

The John Hopper Impact Award is presented annually by the Ziegler Link-age Funds alongside Mary Furlong & Associates and friends of John Hopper to recognize entrepreneurs at the forefront of aging innovation. Each year, the award shines a spotlight on a theme at the heart of the aging experience, and the founders bold enough to tackle it. What began as a way to celebrate a single visionary has grown into a signature moment in the aging community, drawing entrepreneurs, investors, and senior living leaders together around the work that matters most.

"Empowered care means older adults and their families stay in control of their own lives, through every setting and every stage of aging. That's the standard we hold ourselves to at tendercare, and it's the standard this industry should be held to. There's a lot of work ahead, and I'm grateful to Ziegler Link-age for putting a spotlight on it," said Sweeney.

To learn more about tendercare, visit www.trytendercare.com

For more information about Ziegler, please visit us at www.ziegler.com.

About Ziegler:
Ziegler is a privately held, national boutique investment bank, capital markets and proprietary investments firm. It has a unique focus on healthcare, senior living and education sectors, as well as general municipal and structured finance. Headquartered in Chicago with regional and branch offices throughout the U.S., Ziegler provides its clients with capital raising, strategic advisory services, fixed income sales, underwriting and trading as well as Ziegler Credit, Surveillance and Analytics. To learn more, visit www.ziegler.com.

Certain comments in this news release represent forward-looking statements made pursuant to the provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This client's experience may not be representative of the experience of other clients, nor is it indicative of future performance or success. The forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, in particular, the overall financial health of the securities industry, the strength of the healthcare sector of the U.S. economy and the municipal securities marketplace, the ability of the Company to underwrite and distribute securities, the market value of mutual fund portfolios and separate account portfolios advised by the Company, the volume of sales by its retail brokers, the outcome of pending litigation, and the ability to attract and retain qualified employees.

SOURCE Ziegler