Belmont Village Senior Living Endorsement

July 1, 2019

To Whom it May Concern:
Walke Communications was originally contracted by Belmont Village Senior Living in 2001 to help launch our first ever California community. Since that time, Julie Walke has played an instrumental role in building Belmont Village’s reputation and creating awareness across California. She served as our regional public relations representative for a portfolio that grew to include 14 communities by 2019, from Northern to Southern California and in Scottsdale Arizona. Julie has played a pivotal role in many of the company’s national initiatives as well, including our American Heroes: Portraits of Service photography project that began in 2008 and remains active today.

The Heroes project began with a young photographer named Thomas Sanders who wanted to photograph WWII veterans in one of our communities and soon expanded to include establishing community-specific galleries of all veterans in every Belmont Village across the country. Julie created best practices for the photography shoots and gallery specifications that are still in use today as the project continues to grow with each new community and to be refreshed over time. Julie managed the photo shoots, gallery installations and opening events, along with media relations for the West region. She has garnered multiple media placements for each shoot and installation over the years. The project resulted in a published collection of Sanders’ photos in 2010 entitled The Last Good War: The Faces and Voices of WWII. Two-thirds of the veterans in this award-winning book were Belmont Village residents. Julie also worked with the Belmont Village team and the publisher to help manage public relations for Sanders’ book tour.

Other projects that Julie has been instrumental in advancing include Conversations with Art, a semi-annual show of student art in conjunction with the Art Practice School at UC Berkeley. The show takes place at Belmont Village Albany, our senior living community developed in affiliation with the UC Berkeley Retirement Center. As a part of our university affiliation, we seek opportunities to create intergenerational interaction between students and our residents, many of whom are UC Berkeley retired faculty and staff. Julie helped to develop the program, which includes a gallery reception and discussion of the art, along with art sales. She drew from her experience with the University Club’s art program in San Diego to help create a protocol for the program that is still in use. For many of the students, these are their first opportunities to show and discuss their work, and each year the show has generated multiple sales.

This project inspired a variation in our Los Angeles communities last year by the same name, but with a different twist. Our Westwood community is affiliated with UCLA, where several emeriti/ae have begun to explore their artistic interests in retirement and have begun to show their work as a collective. Belmont Village has provided gallery space in two of our Los Angeles communities to support this program, once again with the assistance of Julie.

On a final note, I personally have worked with Julie Walke for 15 years and could not have asked for a better professional collaborator. She has helped to create effective, scalable strategies that are still in active use at our communities around the country. She is a motivated self-starter and leader with a high rate of success in media placements, due in large part to her creative, strategic mind-set and big picture vision. I have learned and grown from my collaborations with her and recommend her highly. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like further information about Julie’s work with Belmont Village.

Amy W. Self APR
Belmont Village Senior Living Endorsement