About Stephanie
The highest-stakes boardroom is the kitchen table
I am Stephanie Drobny, RN, MS-HSL, CPHQ, LSSGB: a nurse executive with more than twenty years in healthcare, the later ones spent keeping large clinical systems from failing. Golden Hour Aging is what happens when I point that at a family instead of a hospital.
- Registered Nurse
- MS, Health Systems Leadership
- Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality
- Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
Who is Stephanie Drobny?
My career in healthcare started with a mop in my hand, as a housekeeper, learning the system from the ground up. It moved through home care aide, certified nursing assistant, and registered nurse, and ended up in the rooms where health systems are run: regional oversight, C-suite boardrooms, and the quality work that keeps large clinical organizations safe.
Along the way I earned a master’s degree in Health Systems Leadership at the University of Colorado Denver, board certification in healthcare quality, and a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. Twenty years of watching where care breaks, and building the systems that stop it breaking.
I am based in Colorado and hold a nursing compact license. Golden Hour Aging works with families across the United States, online.
What do RN, MS-HSL, CPHQ and LSSGB mean?
RN means registered nurse: the clinical license. Behind it sit more than twenty years in healthcare, from housekeeper and home care aide to nurse executive.
MS-HSL is a Master of Science in Health Systems Leadership: how hospitals, clinics, and care organizations are run as systems, not as heroic individual effort.
CPHQ is board certification in healthcare quality: the professional discipline of finding where a process fails and fixing the process, not blaming the person.
LSSGB is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt: a method for taking chaos out of any repeating process, from a hospital ward to a family week.
Put together, it means I am not a therapist, and I am not another voice telling you to try harder. I am a systems person, and your family is carrying a systems problem.
Why did a nurse executive build this?
Because I watched capable, loving families drown, over and over, and the reason was never a lack of love. Families arrive at the aging years with wills, trusts, and estate plans, and nothing at all for the years that come first: the phase where a parent starts forgetting appointments, or struggling with medications, or quietly leaning on the stronger spouse.
And I live it. My own multigenerational home holds my husband’s aging parents, two middle schoolers, and an adult autistic son. The protocols I sell are the protocols my own family runs, so I know exactly what it feels like to have your heart in one room and your focus in another.
The result is the Golden Hour Aging Protocol: my years of systems work, translated into a plan a family can run at home, grounded in the nursing theories of Dorothea Orem and Virginia Henderson.
What Golden Hour Aging isn’t
I am not your parent’s clinician, and nothing here diagnoses anyone or recommends a treatment. I am not a care manager who visits your parent, hires aides, or attends appointments; if your family needs that hands-on coordination, the library explains what those professionals do and what they cost. I am not an attorney or a financial adviser, and the paperwork guides always end the same way: with the professional you should call.
What I offer is what none of those professionals sell: the sequence. What happens as a parent ages, in what order, and what your family should have ready before it does.
Where to find me
I publish a new video every two weeks on YouTube, and I am on Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. The best first step, though, is the one built for you: the free Stability Brief, or a conversation.
Start with the free Stability Brief
A guided self-assessment of how much strain your family is carrying as a parent ages, and what typically comes next. Free, by email, no obligation.