Founders’ Statement
We’re Lauren Tarne and Acasia Vicknair. We’ve been friends and collaborators for years, and between us, we have backgrounds in client service, operations and care systems.
In our work and our own families, we’ve seen how easily growing older becomes a conversation about appointments, health concerns, and what needs to be done next. Those things matter. But they can take up so much room that we stop asking what someone thinks about, what brings them pleasure, or what they still want to do.
We created The Mainstay because we want to help people and their families approach aging differently. There is room for discovery, connection, and a future worth looking forward to, even as circumstances change.
We also believe we need to talk more openly about death. Knowing our time together is limited can help us pay closer attention to how we live and to one another. There are questions worth asking and conversations worth having now.
Presence is where we begin: regular, unhurried conversations with the same person, making time for memories, new ideas, everyday life, and whatever is on someone’s mind.
Our hope is that this work encourages people to look again at someone they think they already know—and gives each person room to be known as they are today.
The person comes first.
The Team
If our approach resonates, the next step is simply a conversation.
Acasia Vicknair
Co-founder & Certified Senior Advisor (CSA)®
My vision for The Mainstay was shaped by deeply personal, yet all too common, experience. While building my career, I navigated complex caregiving roles within my own family. Loved ones required intensive cancer care, including research, time-sensitive treatment decisions, logistical and travel coordination, along with steady support throughout the realities of life-changing diagnoses. Grandparents needed support through life transitions and moves from independent to assisted living and, ultimately, memory care. In my mid-thirties, I experienced the system firsthand when I faced my own cancer diagnosis, requiring complex surgical decision-making, active treatment plans, and adjuvant therapies.
Through these experiences—as a professional, a caregiver, and a patient—I saw how even capable and well-resourced families can struggle to find true care, support, and trusted guidance when life becomes complex.
I co-founded The Mainstay to provide families with a trusted partner who can coordinate care, anticipate needs, and bring order and continuity to challenging situations and new phases of life.
My professional background spans more than twenty years in mental health consulting, operations, program development, training, and education. At The Mainstay, that experience informs how we support our clients and their families, with thoughtful guidance, advocacy when appropriate, and a steady presence when it matters most.
Lauren Tarne
Co-founder & Certified Senior Advisor (CSA)®
The idea for The Mainstay grew from personal experience. As my partner and I began helping our parents navigate later life, I saw how even capable, independent adults can become overwhelmed by the growing health, administrative and logistical demands of everyday living. At the same time, their adult children are often balancing careers, families, and distance.
This work is personal to me. I watched both of my grandmothers navigate the need for care while fiercely wanting to stay in their own homes. Now, with my parents facing their own health challenges and me living further away than I’d like, I understand firsthand the worry that distance creates — and the difference that having the right support in place can make.
I co-founded The Mainstay to create the kind of trusted support I wanted for my own family. Someone who can step in, manage the details, anticipate needs, and bring a clearer picture to the many moving parts that arise during this stage of life and show up with the kind of genuine care that makes a real difference.
My professional background spans public relations, branding, and real estate, where I spent more than a decade working with high-profile clients across industries including entertainment, architecture, aviation, and the property sector. That work shaped my approach to service: thoughtful, discreet, highly attentive, and grounded in long-term trust.
At The Mainstay, those same principles guide how we support the families we serve.