Mickey Thigpen

Background

About Mickey Thigpen

I have recently embarked on my third career, by becoming an area owner with Senior Care Authority, in Winston-Salem, NC. In addition to my prior career experience, this is in no small part due to the fact that my wife, Treva, and I have walked through the end-of-life experience with all four of our parents. Two died in skilled nursing facilities, one died in hospice, and one died at home after eight years of in-home care. My adventure began with a rather idyllic childhood, as part of a working-class family in a small eastern North Carolina town. I was so much younger than my siblings that I was almost an only child. No matter the season, I could be found playing one sort of ball game or another. I did well in school, and was blessed with a Morehead Scholarship, which gave me a free ride to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After earning a bachelor’s degree with honors in experimental psychology, I took a temporary job at a State-run residential facility for developmentally disabled persons, only because my future wife would be completing a year-long special education internship there. Shortly after starting that job, my future wife Treva became my wife. She has somehow managed to remain married to me for fifty-one years. She gave me a beautiful daughter, who gave me a beautiful granddaughter. That temporary job lasted twelve years, and became the foundation of the first of my three careers. I ended up with over forty years of clinical and administrative experience in the public, private for-profit, and private not-for-profit sectors. Within the private sector, I built or helped to build three service companies, ranging from a small not-for-profit agency to a relatively large for-profit company serving up to 480 individuals in group home settings. Within all three sectors, I developed, implemented, and monitored case management systems for the delivery of services to individuals with a variety of disabilities. As a result, I have a broad knowledge of clinical needs, federal and state regulatory requirements, financial necessities, and operational matters. About thirty years into my first career, I took on another temporary job. My church unexpectedly found itself without an administrator, so the pastor asked me to manage church operations until someone could be hired on a permanent basis. That temporary job lasted twenty-one years. For fifteen of those years, I continued to own and operate a for-profit company that delivered community-based residential and treatment services to a variety of disabled adults.