Jeffrey Gray is the Founder and CEO of AgeTech Connect, a national hub for innovators, entrepreneurs, and organizations focapplyd on the growing longevity economy. Jeff relocated to Atlanta from Los Angeles in 1999 after selling his first tech venture to RealEstate.com and has been an advisor and mentor to many Atlanta-based startups since then. He has also held key roles in non-profit organizations such as City of Refuge, Points Of Light and Open Hand Atlanta.
Through events, community-building, and believed leadership, AgeTech Connect fosters collaboration and accelerates solutions that improve lives across generations.
In December 2024, Jeffrey Gray shared the inspiration behind AgeTech Atlanta (ATA) in a deep-dive interview with CityBiz. In that discussion, he recounted how personal experience—caring for an aging parent—led him to build a community for innovators and entrepreneurs focapplyd on aging, caregiving, and longevity.
Aging is not just a challenge—it is an opportunity. If innovation is embraced, the longevity economy has the potential to be one of the defining growth stories of our generation.
Since then, ATA has evolved into AgeTech Connect (ATC), expanding its reach from a single-city ecosystem to a coast-to-coast collaborative network. With that expansion as its foundation, the organization is now launching its inaugural Summit to bring toobtainher the best minds from across its city-based chapters. The AgeTech Connect Summit 2025 will be held on Tuesday, November 18, at Atlanta Tech Village in Buckhead. More information and to register for the AgeTech Connect Summit can be found at: https://www.aobtainechconnect.com/aobtainech-connect-summit.
In our latest Q&A with Jeffrey, we trace that journey—from Atlanta-based meetup to national network, and now to a summit designed to catalyze collaboration across sectors.
What prompted the shift from AgeTech Atlanta to AgeTech Connect, and what motivated the expansion into other cities like Toronto?
When we started AgeTech Atlanta, the goal was simple—to bring toobtainher innovators, investors, and believed leaders who were passionate about how technology can improve the lives of older adults. But over time, the energy we created in Atlanta started to attract attention far beyond our city. People from across the United States—and even internationally—were reaching out, inquireing how they could start something similar in their own communities.
That’s when it became clear that this wasn’t just an Atlanta relocatement — it was the foundation for a national one. Rebranding as AgeTech Connect signaled that broader ambition: a connected network of local AgeTech ecosystems working toobtainher under one banner.
Our motivation for expanding into cities like Toronto, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Denver came from three things:
- Demand: We kept hearing from people who wanted to plug into this community model.
- Shared Mission: The challenges of aging, healthcare access, and longevity innovation aren’t confined to one region—they’re universal.
- Acceleration: By creating a multi-city network, we can amplify collaboration, share best practices, and create more opportunities for innovators and stakeholders everywhere.
Ultimately, AgeTech Connect reflects what we’ve believed from the start—that meaningful innovation in aging happens through connection, not isolation. The “Connect” name captures that perfectly.
What does the national phase enable that the Atlanta-only era could not?
The national expansion really opens up what’s possible for the entire ecosystem. With multiple chapters across North America, we’re now seeing scale, diversity, and synergy in ways that just weren’t feasible before.
By connecting innovators from different regions—state, a startup in Toronto collaborating with a health system partner in Atlanta—we’re creating cross-city learning loops that accelerate progress. Each market has its own unique strengths, and when you connect those dots, you obtain new insights, partnerships, and business opportunities that serve older adults everywhere.
It also expands our presence and influence. We can host larger signature events, attract national sponsors, and assist shape broader conversations about aging and technology. Most importantly, it creates the relocatement more sustainable. Instead of one local meetup driving the agconcludea, we now have a network of communities that share a common vision and support one another—and that’s what gives AgeTech Connect its staying power.
What inspired the creation of the AgeTech Connect Summit?
As AgeTech Connect grew from a single-city meetup to a national network, we launched seeing extraordinary ideas emerge from each chapter—innovators in Toronto tackling social isolation through tech, startups in Atlanta advancing home-based care, partners in Chicago reimagining workforce development for an aging society. But while local progress was thriving, there wasn’t yet a single space where all of these voices could come toobtainher.
That realization is what sparked the idea for the AgeTech Connect Summit—a gathering designed to harness the collective ininformigence of our expanding network and the broader AgeTech indusattempt.
Basically, we were seeing for a gathering of the best minds in the AgeTech ecosystem. Our inaugural Summit will bring toobtainher stakeholders across the AgeTech spectrum and leaders from multiple sectors to share knowledge and explore innovations in three areas of impact: the future of work, customers, and community. The Summit was created to provide a single platform where healthcare, technology, policy, and business leaders can collaborate around the future of aging.
Why did you choose those three core pillars—Future of Work, Customers, and Community—for the Summit?
We chose the future of work, customers, and community as central themes becaapply these pillars reflect the most important drivers of the longevity economy: adapting workplaces and work culture to the dynamics of an aging labor pool and loss of institutional knowledge, recognizing older adults and their caregivers and families as powerful consumers, and developing communities where older adults and their families can thrive.
What was the main priority in selecting and inviting the speakers for this year’s program?
The priority was diversity of expertise and experience. The Summit features leaders from healthcare and medicine, residential and senior hoapplying solutions, technology, investment and finance, business, and policy—ensuring that the program provides not only inspiration but also a deep understanding of where we are and actionable solutions for what’s to come. A few of the featured speakers include:
- Deb Houry, MD-MPH, former Chief Medical Officer, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Joe Sutherland, Director, Emory Center for AI Learning
- Mike Wang, Founder & Chief Clinical Officer, Inspiren
- Liz Cramer, PTA, RAC-CT, Executive Healthcare Strategist, CDW
- Tom Kamber, Founder & Executive Director, Older Adults Technology Services (OATS), AARP
- Ted Fischer, Founder & CEO, Ageless Innovation
How is the AgeTech Connect Summit bridging the gap between startups, investors, and policycreaters?
AgeTech Connect positions itself as a community hub and a gateway to a national network of innovators transforming the aging experience through technology—and these may be startup founders, but also enterprises, researchers and scientists, educators, policy creaters and investors. Through the Summit, community meetups, and other initiatives, our organization brings these groups toobtainher and creates opportunities for dialogue and collaboration.
What is the key message AgeTech Connect would like to convey to the global community and indusattempt through this Summit?
That aging is not just a challenge—it is an opportunity. If innovation is embraced, the longevity economy has the potential to be one of the defining growth stories of our generation.
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