A Place For Mom has beefed up its executive leadership team as part of its ongoing efforts to “reinvent” itself in the next two years. The new hires come to senior living from a variety of large corporations in other industries, including American Express, A&E Networks and Anheuser-Busch Inbev.
The nation’s largest online referral platform for senior housing announced Tuesday the appointment of six new leaders in various roles based in its recently opened and growing New York City office. The hirings came just one week after A Place For Mom opened a new office near Kansas City meant to house 600 employees and aid the company’s growth efforts.
A Place For Mom made the following staff appointments Tuesday:
- Tatyana Zlotsky is the new chief marketing officer and executive vice president of operations. She previously worked for American Express in a variety of management roles.
- Raj Bahl is now chief product officer. He comes to A Place For Mom from A&E Networks, where he was senior vice president and chief technology officer.
- Rebecca Bursky is the company’s new chief human resources officer. She previously led human resources at companies such as TravelClick and MarketWired.
- Ricardo Larroude is now the senior vice president and general manager of emerging businesses. He most recently worked in global finance and risk management at Anheuser-Busch Inbev.
- James Thorman is the senior director of strategy and business development. He was previously a case team leader with Bain & Company.
- Andrew Porter is now general counsel and corporate secretary. He most recently worked as general counsel at INTTRA.
A Place For Mom seeks to have more transparent dialogue with its senior living customers, but doing so is no small feat, as the company needs to shift what has sometimes been a contentious dynamic between APFM and senior living providers.
With its most recent hirings, A Place For Mom hopes to build a leadership team that will aid the company as it evolves and strives toward that goal, according to CEO Larry Kutscher.
“Part of this is having the right senior team in place — the right expertise, the right resources, enough people and the right quality of people — to take on all these opportunities and challenges,” Kutscher told Senior Housing News. “My job is to create a talented team that knows what it has to accomplish and how to get there.”
None of the newly announced leaders have extensive senior living or health care experience. Instead, they were hired for their leadership skills, he added.
“Great leadership skills, the ability to drive outcomes and results and work well with other people, that is what I look for first,” Kutscher said. “We have a team of 900 people here who deeply understand the industry and our customers, and they’re going to help these folks really learn that space.”
And, bringing in leaders from outside the senior living and health care space could infuse the industry with new ideas, he added.
“They bring outside knowledge and experience,” Kutscher said “And I think they will help bring a wealth of new ideas and opportunities, as well as the drive and expertise in implementing our ideas.”
Kutscher himself recently came to the senior living space, when he joined A Place for Mom last year. Prior to joining the senior housing online referral platform, he spent over a decade leading TravelClick, a cloud-based data solutions provider for the hospitality industry.
A Place For Mom currently works with more than roughly 16,000 provider communities in the U.S. and Canada and employs about 900 people. But that number is expected to ramp up in the coming year as the company further invests in its technology and workforce. The company is currently hiring for more than 200 job openings and has plans to fill hundreds of new jobs in the coming years.
“We’ve built out a world class team with great people,” Kutscher said. “We think that gives us more confidence and a greater likelihood of success as we attack the different initiatives and investments we’re undertaking.”
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