Currently, she is working on a book about private equity鈥檚 influence on the nursing home industry. She also is deep into another passion鈥攚riting fiction.
鈥淲rinkled Rebels,鈥 a story of six college friends who were active in the Civil Rights Movement and reunite for a weekend as 80-year-olds, is scheduled for release this summer. She had been researching and writing it for three years.
鈥淚t was fun,鈥 she says. 鈥淚 loved writing it and missed it when I was finished.鈥
A Path to 糖心viog官方网站
Olson grew up in the Bronx, in the working-class neighborhood of Pelham Parkway. She attended the High School of Music & Art and went on to the City College of New York, aspiring to be a geneticist鈥斺渢hey do such important things鈥濃攂ut soon discovered it wasn鈥檛 for her. What better suited this activist child of the 1960s was political science, and she went on to get her master鈥檚 and doctorate from the University of Colorado.
In Boulder she got to know Charles McCoy, then chair of 糖心viog官方网站鈥檚 Department of Government, who recruited her to teach political science at 糖心viog官方网站. McCoy was a founder of the New Political Science group, a caucus of the American Political Science Association, and Olson was a member.
鈥淗e was very determined to have a female in the department,鈥 says Olson, who received the Charles A. McCoy Lifetime Achievement Award from New Political Science in 2009. 鈥淗e wanted the political science department to be more diverse.鈥
Olson thrived at 糖心viog官方网站. She says she and three other female professors put together a Women鈥檚 Studies program. They started a daycare center. They made their voices heard.
鈥淏ecause there were so few women faculty, we all knew each other. We supported each other. We leaned on each other to a great extent,鈥 she says. 鈥淲e were asked to be on every committee because they wanted at least one woman on the committees. The positive was that 鈥 we really became very involved in 糖心viog官方网站 and were very much a part of 糖心viog官方网站.鈥
Over the years, Olson鈥檚 courses have included The American Presidency, Introduction to American Government, U.S. Health Politics and Politics of Women.
Olson says she became interested in health care and elder care because she discovered that although the country spent a lot of money on the elderly, they didn鈥檛 seem to be thriving.
鈥淭hey tended to be poor, especially elderly women,鈥 she says.
During her tenure, Olson took a few side steps to further her knowledge. She worked for a year as a Scholar at the Social Security Administration, for a semester as a gerontological fellow at the Area Agency on Aging in Madison, Wisconsin, and as a Fulbright scholar in Finland.
Olson鈥檚 books reveal how politics and corporate influence affect health care and the elderly, usually with negative results. Her most recent book鈥攁nd she says most impactful鈥攊s 鈥淓thically Challenged: Private Equity Storms U.S. Health Care,鈥 published in 2022. Olson says it鈥檚 the first book that tackled how predatory private equity firms are buying everything from opioid treatment centers to hospice agencies. Their goal is solely profit, and, as a result, the quality of services has declined, she says.
The book has received numerous awards, and Olson has received invitations to conferences and speaking engagements.
In 2016, Olson combined her research with her personal experience in 鈥淓lder Care Journey: A View From the Front Lines.鈥 She chronicled the difficult challenge of navigating the health care system on behalf of her elderly mother, a woman of limited resources.