Artist Spotlight, November 2026: Chris Gibson, IT Administrator

We are thrilled to bring to the spotlight Chris, the leader of our IT department, who keeps Arbor Acres running behind the scenes!

"I started at Arbor Acres in 2001, a few months before 9/11happened. I was working Maintenance at the time and decided to leave Old SalemMaintenance staff to come to Arbor Acres for the pay raise. My passion istechnology. I started college for IT shortly after coming to Arbor Acres. OnceI graduated, the opportunity arose for an IT position here so I made theswitch.

I would say what I’m looking forward to and NOT lookingforward to are the same thing: AI (Artifical Intelligence). I think thissomewhat new technology is changing the world, in some good ways and some bad.Regardless which side of the AI fence you’re on, changes are coming!

The STEWARD value that means the most to me is Trust. I think in our environment as well as my line of work. trust is something that is required, not just expected. Managing a corporate IT infrastructure and systems, we have access to almost anything. Trust is required due to the sensitive nature of that data. Also jeopardizing compliance or data security would put our whole organization at risk, so trust is the foundation that support the core of the IT department.

There is one memory that stands out to me while working here, and always will. I had been here a couple of years--I was still in Maintenance and school for IT. Even though I was all Maintenance, there were a couple of residents with computers and I would help them much as I could at the time. These were still fairly early days of the PC around here! At that time, a resident lived here who had ALS and was confined to an electric wheelchair. He was cantankerous to say the least, but he had a computer that was given to him by family. He would call me over to help him with something simple, usually with Solitaire.

One day,. I set aside about 30 minutes to create an email address for him and show him how to navigate the internet. He was thrilled! I’ll never forget as long as I live. About two weeks after that he called me to his room for something or other, and said, 'I just wanted to talk to you, everything is good.' He gave me a hug, and with tears rolling down his cheeks he said to me, 'This is the first time in as long as I remember that I’m glad to be alive.' The computer had allowed him to connect to the outside world again. You can count the times I’ve shed tears in my adult life on one hand, and as I walked out of that building that was one of those times. I think, for me, that’s what changed this from a job to a career."

Chris's impact at Arbor Acres has been immeasurable, and we are grateful to him for sharing his story this month!