Editor’s note: McKnight’s Home Care, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Long-Term Care News are profiling the McKnight’s 2023 Women of Distinction honorees daily from July 5 to Aug. 15. For additional McKnight’s Women of Distinction content, visit this page.

Friendly, approachable and unquenchably driven, Aimee Middleton brings the heart and humility of a frontline caregiver to the C-suite. As she climbed the corporate ladder at the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, she never forgot her humble beginnings waiting tables. And even though she no longer is working for tips, she didn’t lose that occupation’s service mindset. 

Middleton held leadership and faculty roles at Clarkson College and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She has served as a branch manager for Associated Staffing, a national account manager for Hirease, an administrator for home care specialties and director of client development for Tabitha Health Care Services, and administrator for Vetter Health Services. 

Middleton joined Good Samaritan in 2017, serving first as an administrator (2017-2019) and then as a regional executive director of operations before taking on the vice president of operations role in January 2022. In addition to her professional responsibilities, she taught college-level healthcare business classes as an adjunct professor as a way to share her love for older adults with the next generation of healthcare administrators. 

Middleton is known as someone who runs toward trouble, not away from it. As Hurricane Ian was bearing down on Florida in September 2022, she was on-site at Good Samaritan communities, helping staff evacuate residents and making sure they had everything they needed. It was important to her that everything possible was done to ensure that residents retained their dignity throughout the evacuation. 

In addition to tending to the needs of residents displaced by the hurricane, Middleton led Good Samaritan’s incident command process and gave numerous media interviews, always propelled by the needs of residents. 

Middleton energizes those around her to find a way to do more with less, to be creative, to serve with passion and to not take no for an answer if something is in the best interests of those the organization serves.

The McKnight’s Women of Distinction program is jointly administered by McKnight’s Home Care, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. PointClickCare is the Diamond sponsor of this year’s program. PharMerica is the Silver sponsor. Additional sponsors include American HealthTech, Healthcare Services Group, Omnicare, Sentrics and ShiftKey.

Visit this web page to see lists of honorees from 2023 and previous years.