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Meet Iowa's Executive Council

By: Source: AARP.org Date Posted: 2007-08-16 13:06:30.124672-04:00

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The AARP Iowa Executive Council has the responsibility for overseeing the AARP state office's strategic planning.

Members include:
State President, vacant
Betty Grandquist, Executive Council Member, Advocacy
Thomas Beell, Executive Council Member, Communications
Bruce Koeppl, AARP Iowa State Director

Their role is to help develop the AARP state office's blueprint for advocacy, build community service initiatives and devise ways to increase the effectiveness of communications. We thank them for bringing their wealth of experience to this important AARP volunteer leadership post.

Betty Grandquist, Executive Council Member, Advocacy

Betty Grandquist, a native of Murray, is a long-time AARP Iowa volunteer and nationally recognized human services administrator. She has spent her professional and volunteer career in advocacy service for older Iowans. Currently Grandquist is Executive Director of the Iowa Association of Area Agencies on Aging. She began her career in public health service, working for 10 years in health planning and development for the Iowa State Department of Public Health.

Governor Terry Brandstad appointed Grandquist to be Executive Director of the Iowa Department of Elder Affairs, a position she held from 1987 to 1999. She has received numerous awards and honors for her work including the National Governors Association Distinguished Public Service Award in 1993 and service as co-chair of the National Governors Association national roundtable on aging, "Setting the Agenda for the Nation 2020" committee.

Thomas Beell, Executive Council Member, Communications

Thomas Beell of Ames, is currently a professor of journalism and director of the undergraduate program at the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University. A faculty member since 1975, Beell spent 10 years of his teaching career supervising the morning news programs on WOI-TV, the commercial TV station formerly owned by ISU. For 20 years, he was film reviewer for the Ames Daily Tribune, and he currently co-hosts a monthly film program on WOI-AM/FM public radio. Beell, a native of Tacoma, WA also teaches film classes at the College for Seniors at ISU.