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Volunteer Finds Ways to Connect
Courtney Burton’s story hits home
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When it comes to advocating for older adults, AARP Minnesota volunteer state president Courtney Burton of St. Louis Park has a lot of personal experience to draw from — especially as a caregiver.
For 18 years, she and her sister cared for aging parents. First was their mother, who had dementia for many years before dying in 2018. And then last year, they cared for their father until his death from heart failure.
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Burton recalls how the family — including her parents — decided to move them to assisted living, knowing her mother would need memory care down the road. “We were willing to have the difficult conversations needed to make this happen,” she says.
“Anyone doing caregiving knows your life gets put on hold,” Burton observes. “It became a constant balancing act of where to direct my energy as a human, as a caregiver and as a family member.”
MAKING THE PERSONAL POLITICAL
She quickly used that experience to champion AARP priorities.
“Last year, when we were on Capitol Hill, it was literally, I think two weeks after Dad died. Oh, I was ready,” says Burton, who is 67.
Connecting the personal to the political is one of the key ways Burton has become a top advocate for AARP Minnesota. She joined AARP Minnesota’s volunteer Executive Council in 2023 and became volunteer state president in 2025. All of this comes after a roughly 25-year career in merchant buying for retailers like CVS, followed by 11 years working in sales. The latter job gave her the flexibility she needed while taking care of her mother.
Juggling caregiving with her career gave her important insights as she advocated for older adults in Congress. That Capitol Hill visit just after her father died was around the time Congress was taking up President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, and she wanted to impress upon lawmakers how much money families spend on caregiving.
“That is completely under the radar, let alone if you added up the value of the services offered by family members,” Burton notes. (For more on caregiving, see aarp.org/MNcaregiver.)
In April of this year, Burton was back in Washington for AARP’s annual Lobby Day, where she and Cathy McLeer — who is the state director for AARP Minnesota — pushed the state’s congressional delegation on several issues important to older adults, including protecting Social Security, supporting family caregivers and fighting fraud.
“When someone has that deep personal connection to the issues that they work on, they become a great advocate,” McLeer says of Burton. “They become an inspiration to others.”
Burton and McLeer work in tandem, and a lot of the advocacy work done by AARP Minnesota is driven by volunteers like Burton. In all, more than 350 volunteers play a role in furthering AARP Minnesota’s goals.
When Burton joined the Executive Council for AARP Minnesota, she wasn’t looking for things to fill her day. She’s a jazz vocalist for a band called Court’s In Session, which plays gigs in the Twin Cities and throughout the Midwest, including at performing arts centers.
She also has a business as an executive coach.
“So it’s not like I had nothing to do — but it seemed intriguing,” Burton recalls.
She says that AARP is flexible about the work volunteers will do. For example, it will help train a volunteer for roles that are new to them. AARP “meets you where you are as a volunteer,” she says.
“One of the things I do really well is I create spaces where genuine deeper conversations can happen,” she adds. “I do that through my music. I do that through the coaching and facilitation.... I bring a calm presence.”
One of Burton’s roles as president is hosting AARP Minnesota’s “10 in 10” livestream conversations with policymakers and issue experts, including one earlier this year with a state representative and a St. Cloud police sergeant on a bill to crack down on cryptocurrency scams.
BALANCING HEAD AND HEART
Kate Schaefers, who previously served as volunteer state president, works with her at the University of Minnesota’s Midlife Academy. Burton teaches a class called Next Chapter Reset: Creating Momentum. Schaefers, the director of the university’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and the Midlife Academy, also serves on the AARP Minnesota Executive Council with Burton.
She says Burton is both strategic and able to connect on a personal level. It’s a valuable asset for an advocate to have.
“She’s just very effective at balancing that head and heart,” says Schaefers.
More on Volunteering
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