{"id":29721,"date":"2021-08-18T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-18T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/?p=29721"},"modified":"2026-02-22T15:34:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T23:34:03","slug":"changemakers-series-ben-burke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/changemakers-series-ben-burke\/","title":{"rendered":"Changemakers Series"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As an expert who\u2019s redefining the future of senior living, it\u2019s no surprise that Ben Burke has earned a place in this year\u2019s Changemaker class. Recognized by Senior Housing News<\/a> (SHN) in a special interview series \u2014 proudly sponsored by Yardi<\/a> \u2014 Ben embodies what it means to be a senior living leader.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

About Ben Burke<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yardi client Ben Burke is the president of Anthology Senior Living<\/a>, a platform that develops, acquires and operates communities as an affiliate of CA Ventures. With extensive experience in the industry, Ben has brought unique, strong ideas to Anthology \u2014 including the initiative to create high quality communities at an attainable price point. Under Ben\u2019s leadership, Anthology is leveraging smart and economical design, technology and operational flexibility to stay ahead of the curve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Through the Changemakers series, Ben shares the fresh ideas he\u2019s put into action at Anthology. He delves into the advantages of being vertically integrated, the importance of putting residents first and more. Here\u2019s a highlight from the SHN interview<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you speak to the ability to develop better products by being vertically integrated?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The advantages from the new development side are endless. The heads of our development team, investment team and acquisition team sit at a table every single Monday with the heads of our operations and asset management teams. We talk about every single deal in detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, once a month, we have what we call a \u201cSuper Thursday Meeting,\u201d and we go through everything that links operations and development. Whether that\u2019s design, construction timelines, or some of the areas like sales trailers and pre-opening and signage, we talk in detail about all these topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FF&E [furniture, fixtures and equipment] is a huge area. The business is so nuanced from both an operational and a customer perspective that if you are not someone who has operated in our communities, it is very difficult to make all of the right decisions in the design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you walked into a room of developers or architects from different industries and asked them, how many people in this room have ever lived in a student housing building, you\u2019d probably get a big chunk of folks that went to college and lived in some sort of student housing building. If you asked, how many folks have ever lived in an apartment building, you\u2019d have a bunch of folks who lived in an apartment or condo at one time or another. If you asked, how many folks have lived in assisted living, you\u2019d get very few hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who have lived in apartment buildings can better design apartment buildings because they were residents at some point in time. It\u2019s just a different depth of knowledge, and that\u2019s why our operations folks are in the buildings on a day-to-day basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is important to our residents? How important is living space versus a robust kitchen area? Is ceiling height important or not important? What is the best use of technology? What is valuable? These are not obvious things, and without operations at the table, you will not be able to easily make those decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthology is trying to move the needle toward a next-gen product. On the other hand, I assume you don\u2019t want to get too far ahead of the market. How do you find that balance?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We want to get our fundamentals and our baseline right first, without question. What do our residents most care about? What do their family members most care about? What do the referral partners most care about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The residents care about a fun, lively and safe environment. They care about price and quality, but I think they care about the community nature of our product even more. They care about the food, they care about the activities program, and they care about the things that make them happy and fulfilled. Our functional, purpose-built amenities spaces are the starting point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also want their life to be easy, so we think about things like the length of hallways and elevator locations. Walking down a hallway might seem easy to a person living in an apartment building, but at a certain age it becomes harder. Are there areas for residents to take breaks and maybe take a phone call or read a book along the hallway? Absolutely. Those fundamentals are the heart and soul of our business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We do take risks, but the most important thing is to facilitate socialization in a beautiful setting. We think about that through technology, whether that\u2019s life safety, air filtration systems or even dynamic lighting. Those are all things that we then take risks on thoughtfully, to determine if they are of any value to our residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re not in this business to build [design] magazine submissions, we\u2019re in this business to build highly functional and enjoyable spaces for our residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What role is technology playing in driving change in senior living?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have a very human business. I\u2019m skeptical of layering tons of technology into the foundation of our business. However, I think the tools that are tangential to our business will certainly be affected by technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An example of that is communication. Communication to our residents. Communication to our team members. Communication to our residents\u2019 families \u2014 building trust and starting a conversation around ways to make our product better are areas where we are seeing technology help a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will also be technological changes in how we provide medical care in our communities. Telehealth has a real shot of improving our offering. It\u2019s not going to provide the care that we do, but we\u2019re also not doing a lot of diagnoses. Our residents either have to go somewhere for that, or have someone come in physically for that. Through telehealth, we can shortcut that process and help our residents thrive more quickly. Telehealth is also easier on the provider and I think that\u2019s a real area of potential opportunity with technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also continue to see advances in construction technology that is agnostic to senior living, per se. If we are able to build our buildings more efficiently, at lower costs with similar or higher quality, we can rent our units for less and earn the same return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then on the staffing side, we\u2019re seeing a bunch of interesting technology around recruitment and training. These tools help make us a great company to work for and improve our ability to find strong team members. Again, it is somewhat agnostic to senior housing but moving forward quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visit SHN to read Ben Burke\u2019s full Changemaker interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As an expert who\u2019s redefining the future of senior living, it\u2019s no surprise that Ben Burke has earned a place in this year\u2019s Changemaker class. Recognized by Senior Housing News (SHN) in a special interview series \u2014 proudly sponsored by Yardi \u2014 Ben embodies what it means to be a senior living leader.   About […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":782,"featured_media":29723,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2952],"tags":[2855,842],"class_list":["post-29721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senior-living","tag-changemakers-series","tag-senior-living"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nYardi Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read an interview with Changemaker Ben Burke, a senior living leader honored in the 2021 Yardi-sponsored series, presented by SHN.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/changemakers-series-ben-burke\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Changemakers Series\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Read an interview with Changemaker Ben Burke, a senior living leader honored in the 2021 Yardi-sponsored series, presented by SHN.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/changemakers-series-ben-burke\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Yardi Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-08-18T12:30:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-02-22T23:34:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2021\/07\/2021-changemakers_Ben-Burke.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Natalie Mahn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Natalie Mahn\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/changemakers-series-ben-burke\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/changemakers-series-ben-burke\/\",\"name\":\"Changemaker Ben Burke - 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