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A new group of senior living leaders is infusing their companies with new plans and philosophies that will help chart the way forward for the senior living industry’s future health.
One can look directly at recent announcements of incoming CEOs or companies making distinct succession plans to see that the changing of the guard is paramount to keeping fresh ideas free-flowing during the crucial growth periods to come.
The recent announcement of LCS transitioning leadership from outgoing CEO Joel Nelson to President Chris Bird in early 2025 is a clear signal to other organizations that large operators see planning for the future is just as vital as growing operations to capitalize on current demand.
Since 2022, many operators within the senior living industry have passed the torch on to new CEOs. Others that recently named a new top leader include Atria Senior Living, which appointed Holly Belter-Chesser as CEO in February; Harmony Senior Services, where Ken Segarnick became CEO in May; Covenant Living, which promoted longtime executive David Erickson to CEO in June; Ebenezer, which hired former Ecumen senior vice president Brett Anderson also in June; Ascension Living, which named Erin Shadbolt CEO in July; and Volante Senior Living, which hired former MBK Senior Living President Jeff Fischer as CEO in July.
As SHN has written before, such baton handoffs may not always be smooth. But the flurry of leadership transitions and hires is indicative of a broader need for succession planning in senior living despite those risks.
In this week’s exclusive, members-only SHN+ Update, I analyze the recent leadership changes and offer the following insights:
– Charting the LCS succession plan and its implications for the industry’s future
– Why bringing in talent from outside the industry must continue to be a high priority
A 2- to 3-year process at LCS
Charting the rise of the LCS and its sphere of companies — from its life plan community roots to now being one of the largest providers in the country — is important in understanding the thinking behind the company’s ongoing leadership transition.
Bird told me the company’s succession planning effort started in 2022 following the company’s recapitalization with Redwood Capital Investments and McCarthy Capital.
Bird described the ongoing succession planning effort as a “well thought-out, two- to three-year process.”
“We started talking about what we needed to be doing differently and better over the next five to 10-plus years to keep our journey moving in the right direction as an organization,” Bird told me.
As he takes the reins, Bird said he plans to continue the company’s “culture of cross-collaboration” between corporate leaders and frontline community leadership teams. His overall goal is to improve operating performance and evolve the company’s business model to attract new demand.
“We collaborate, we partner, we listen, and we ask questions — all these features helped us grow and achieve our successes,” Bird said. “There’s not going to be massive, noticeable differences.”
Ahead of making his first 100-day plan for guiding LCS forward, Bird told me he would look to personally guide other LCS leaders to create “aspirational growth” that ultimately leads to an improved resident experience for those in LCS communities nationwide.
A “key piece” to LCS’s continued success in operations is its commitment to data science and integrating data analytics into its operations to improve resident care and create efficiencies for frontline workers. Bird called data “the most important commodity on Earth these days.”
To back that up, LCS has invested in hiring a data science team to provide operational insights to leadership, alongside the monumental task of transitioning the company’s over 35,000 residents to one centralized electronic health record (EHR) rather than a fragmented, by-community approach.
This is central to operators being able to capitalize on incoming demographic-driven demand for senior living, and I believe this commitment to capturing and using data to improve care is the natural progression for successful operators in the space.
“If we don’t have a data source for every resident who lives in our community, we’re never going to have the right outcome,” Bird told me, referencing the importance of being able to provide lifestyle and wellness-driven living options for incoming older adults. “Today, as an industry, we’re set up to be reactive to what happens when a resident falls, rather than having prescriptive intel coming in that can help get these things corrected.”
While the industry has “a long way to go,” as Bird put it plainly to me, it’s clear that the industry’s successful operators will harness this data-first approach.
The recent LCS leadership transition announcement shows that these transitions occur slowly over time and this is a path other companies must take which will only benefit the health and future of the industry. This approach also removes any sudden, abrupt organizational changes that could derail the climb to greater operating performance.
With a succession plan in the works for the better part of the last three years for LCS, I believe this longer-range strategy is indicative that leadership transitions take serious foresight and planning to execute a seamless changeover.
While there’s no doubt Bird will leave his mark on LCS just as Nelson has, I believe this continuity in top leadership will be helpful for organizations to continue improving occupancy and net operating income. And other large operators seem to have also executed well on succession – for instance, Belter-Chesser at Atria ascended to the CEO role after more than a decade with the company, and was named to the position concurrently with the announcement of her predecessor, John Moore, retiring.
All that said, I’m also struck by how the new class of CEOs includes many industry veterans. For the sector to evolve, I also believe that senior living needs an infusion of top leadership talent from other industries.
‘Filling our brains with a different type of knowledge’
I certainly understand why the board of a senior living company would prefer to tap someone with deep industry knowledge when naming a new CEO. The stakes are high.
One needs to look no further than the tumult caused when a leadership transition does not pan out — take the one-year tenure of now-outgoing Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan, as the coffee giant battled with declining sales revenue and activist investor stress.
But especially as these senior living CEO appointments create some top leadership roles to backfill, I hope to see more hires from other industries. And I especially hope that senior living providers will be able to retain such hires and eventually move them into the top executive positions in the future.
The industry does not have a stellar track record in this regard. A partial list of leaders from other industries who have joined senior living only to again depart includes Aras Erekul at Watermark; Cindy Kent and Labeed Diab at Brookdale; and Nikki Leondakis at Revel Communities.
To be fair, some of these companies have displayed an ongoing commitment to bringing in talent from other fields, as have some other operators and owners. Leondakis’ successor at Revel, Danette Opaczewski, comes from the hotel industry. And while Atria went with long-tenured Belter-Chesser as CEO, the company drew from the restaurant industry when hiring Chris Nall as chief technology officer a few years ago. On the REIT side, Welltower made a high-profile hire from the multifamily industry when bringing John Burkart on board as COO.
Bellevue, Washington-based Aegis Living is among the most prominent companies that has brought in leaders to its roster from the likes of Amazon, Blue Nile Diamond Jewelers, Eddie Bauer, Louis Vuitton, Nike, and Starbucks, to name a few.
Aegis Living currently has approximately a 50% rate of general managers within the organization who have come from the hospitality sector.
“When another [senior living] company steals from another company, you’re not really developing new knowledge,” CEO Dwayne Clark told me in a recent interview. “We have a tendency in the industry to over-promote people, and when we do that, we get in trouble—so it’s about filling our brains with a different type of knowledge.”
Clark believes that hiring leaders with a wide base of knowledge, not just senior living operations, makes Aegis a “richer” company.
I believe reaching outside of the senior living industry for top leadership talent at key positions could help push the industry forward by bringing in new ideas and supporting future growth.
The senior living industry could take cues from companies outside the industry, including telling better stories about its workforce as done by grocery store chain Publix or improve employee engagement from Southwest Airlines, something LCS has done since SHN first reported on it in 2016. Companies could also look to global furniture retailer Ikea and its effort to improve staff benefits and support for workers.
There are many ways senior living organizations can grow in 2025 and beyond, and I believe companies must think differently when it comes to future recruitment and retention of staff. While there are many qualified and capable leaders in the space currently, an outside hire could help infuse new life into organizations seeking different perspectives.
