He’s a CEO and founder, educator and advocate, leading a public conversation around person-centred dementia care and Indigenous-led health innovation
Age: 35
“My grandmother was living with Alzheimer’s and I watched how she navigated her journey,” Andrew Karesa says. The family tried to give her the best care, but Karesa thought they could do more. One night he came across a video about the Hogeweyk Dementia Village in the Netherlands. “This is what I wanted to do,” he says, “I wanted to bring this dementia support to the capital region, to create a space where care isn’t institutionalized. It’s person-centred.”
At the time, Karesa was a practising engineer doing an MBA at the University of Alberta. Inspired by the village model, he came up with blueBell Village.
Karesa knew that the care given to one of his grandmothers wouldn’t work for the other, who was born on reserve and wouldn’t be well served by a Eurocentric-model.
“How do I build something that allows the care teams to know more and get the best approach?” he wondered. If families and practitioners could communicate and co-ordinate, they could share information ensuring the best care, no matter their patient’s background, nor who is providing the care.
The business has evolved to become blueBell Connect, a digital hub that unifies communication across care teams, recognizing that dementia care isn’t one size fits all. The hub supports hired and family caregivers, using an algorithm that generates personalized recommendations for day-to-day activities tailored to a particular patient’s background.
As CEO and founder, Karesa has expanded his advocacy, hosting The Dementia Collective podcast and speaking about Indigenous dementia care in front of Treaty Six health leaders and in First Nations communities. “I couldn’t have done this on my own. I have an amazing family,” he says. “So many people in the Indigenous community have helped support me and educate me. It’s not happening in a vacuum.”
This article appears in the November-December 2026 issue of Edify
