Sheila spent most of her professional life in advertising as a Consultant/Associate Creative Director with an expertise in new product development. After 30 years of dedicating her life to this profession, several profound experiences changed her life. First, she became sole caregiver of her ill mother and an emotional crutch for her best friend, Susan who was diagnosed with cancer. By undertaking this dual role, Sheila truly experienced the tremendous burden caregivers have to endure.

In 1988, she became part of a group of 12 women (mostly strangers to each other) who came together and stayed together for the next three and a half years to care for their mutual friend Susan. The contrast of caring for someone without support to the experience of sharing responsibilities with a group proved to Sheila that this new collaborative approach to caregiving was something of immeasurable value and needed to be shared with caregivers everywhere.

As a result, she and her co-author, Cappy Capossela, documented the systems used by the group in their book, Share The Care, How To Organize A Group To Care For Someone Who Is Seriously Ill, Simon & Schuster, 1995. This system guides friends, neighbors, co-workers, and acquaintances with the roadmap for creating and maintaining a "caregiving family" to help someone they know facing a health, aging, medical issue or any circumstance where support is needed including multiple births, or grandparents raising small children.

In January of 2002, Sheila, tragically, had to form yet another caregiver group for her co-author and best friend, Cappy, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died 10 months later.

The result of this third personal caregiving experience led Sheila to abandon her career and create ShareTheCaregiving, Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit organization. In 2008, the organization became a Project of the National Center for Civic Innovation and currently operates under their fiscal umbrella. The mission is to improve the "quality of life" of anyone who needs support and to reduce the stress, depression, isolation, and economic hardship often suffered by their caregivers.

In 2004 Sheila revised and updated Share The Care and added 50 pages of new information and ideas pioneered by groups around the country. The second edition was cited by The Library Journal as "One of the Best Consumer Healthcare Books of 2004." It also generated articles/mentions in: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, AARP Magazine and The Chicago Tribune. The Share The Care model is now evidence-informed based on a recent research study featured in The Journal of Gerontological Social Work in 2016. To date, Share The Care™ groups have been documented in 48 states, 13 countries.

Sheila is a member of several professional caregiving/aging organizations, a member of the National Speakers Association and is one of the Co-Founders of EmblemHealth's New York City Partnership for Family Caregiving Corps.

She leads an accredited full day training for health professionals and delivers workshops presentations and keynotes across the US and Canada for health professionals, faith communities and caregivers. She is the recipient of many awards including named as a L'Oreal Paris Woman of Worth Honoree and a Daily Point of Light Award for creating meaningful change across America.
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