Senior Living Changemakers

When Yardi launched its Changemakers initiative last year to capture innovative thinking in senior living, few could have anticipated the profound challenges that emerged over the next 15 months.

Written by Joel Nelson

10 / 21 / 20

3 min read

When Yardi launched its Changemakers initiative last year to capture innovative thinking in senior living, few could have anticipated the profound challenges that emerged over the next 15 months.

Changemakers, a collaboration with Senior Housing News, features interviews with leaders who offer creative perspectives on a range of issues including community architecture; care support partnerships with outside parties; the collocation of independent living, assisted living and memory care under one roof; technology issues; and staff members’ work/life balance.

Eleven senior living provider executives presented their thoughts on the state of the industry in the Changemakers series for 2020, which is now available as an eBook.

COVID-19, of course, ended up overshadowing almost every other issue this year. Mary Leary, a Changemaker with Mather, predicts that the pandemic “is going to catapult the industry forward because we’re having to abandon, at least temporarily, ways in which we have been providing services, which will give us an opportunity to rethink how we may want to do things differently.”

Here’s a sampling of other impressions you’ll find in the eBook:

“Changemakers definitely are risk-takers. When I first started Silverado, it was such an enormous change that I was proposing to the industry’s norm of bringing in the medical piece, the clinical piece, the 24-hour seven-day-a-week licensed nurses, master’s level social workers, and don’t even get me started with use of pets and children coming in.” – Loren Shook, Silverado
“Our communities are designed to fit the neighborhood. It does not look like the sunrise Victorian mansion that gets plopped down into areas that don’t have Victorian mansions. We use the local vernacular.” – Michael Schonbrun, Balfour Senior Living Care
“It’s not good enough to say, ‘I’m a risk-taker.’ What does that mean? Does that mean you’re at the firm every other Thursday? It’s not good enough just to be a risk-taker, you have to quantify risk. This [COVID-driven] economic downturn is a great example.” – Dwayne Clark, Aegis Living
“We are less focused on the number of changes or the speed, but rather how meaningful the change may be to seniors, their families, and our associates. The number of ideas are infinite and can result in busy-ness rather than improved sound business practices.” — Marc Vorkapich, Watercrest Senior Living

Besides sponsoring Changemakers, Yardi drives innovation by offering a comprehensive technology platform for senior living management. Learn more.

AUTHOR

Joel Nelson, senior marketing writer, joined Yardi in 2007. His byline has appeared in New York Real Estate Journal, Canadian Property Management and Los Angeles Lawyer, among others. He has won multiple awards from major professional organizations including the International Association of Business Communicators and Public Communicators of Los Angeles. Joel earned a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College.

Senior Living Changemakers

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