‘3 Jobs in One’: How 8 Senior Living Operators Support, Hire, Train Executive Directors

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Senior living operators are evolving their leadership development programs and training to prepare the next generation of senior living executive directors.

The vital role of the executive director is becoming even more vital in 2026 and today’s community leaders must bring soft skills in hospitality, oversee care coordination and interpret operational data, all while serving as the public face of a community.

Senior living providers are recruiting leaders from outside the industry, establishing leadership development tracks and using technology to give staff time back to spend on community engagement. As clinical acuity and rising demand make community operations more complex, operators are asking community leaders to take on a broad set of skills.

The executive director of 2026 must understand healthcare, hospitality, finance, sales, staffing, regulatory compliance and resident engagement. At the same time, that leader must remain visible to residents, families and employees rather than managing the business from behind an office door.

The executive director in 2026 is now ‘three jobs in one’

The role of the executive director has evolved into “three jobs in one,” according to John Hartmayer, who is COO and executive vice president for Waltham, Massachusetts-based Benchmark Senior Living.

“It involves leading a hospitality business, overseeing a healthcare environment and running a complex business operation,” Hartmayer said. “That requires a much broader skill set than what was previously needed.”

The core tasks of executive directors today are not new. Every day, they must oversee a community’s financial performance, including occupancy, expenses and margins; resident satisfaction, employee engagement and quality. Now as it has always been, executive directors must answer the phone when no one else can. What has changed is the complexity of the environment in which they must perform and make strong operating performance a reality.

An executive director from a decade ago could still operate a community of today, but they would face more technology, more intense competition for talent and both residents and families with increased expectations, according to Atria Senior Living Senior Vice President of Human Resources Meg Pletcher.

“Today, they are leaders who have to be able to balance things like hospitality, healthcare, talent development and sales,” Pletcher said.

To this end, many senior living providers that spoke with Senior Housing News described executive directors today as the “CEO of the community.”

“They have to do all of that while still being highly visible in the building,” Pegasus Senior Living Senior Vice President of People and Culture Katheryn Pigott said. “Essentially, it’s balancing the business with the people.”

Customer expectations and resident satisfaction are shaping how the executive director role is evolving in 2026. Residents are moving into communities seeking socialization, amenities and a lifestyle that meets their expectations for living prior to joining a community. At the same time, rising resident acuity is making care coordination and medication management more difficult.

Acts Retirement-Life Communities previously recruited executive directors from clinical and nursing home administrator backgrounds, according to Brian Levesque, vice president of operations for Acts’ Northeast region. Acts now considers leaders with experience in hotels, country clubs and culinary operations as more viable candidates who can grasp the basics of senior living operations and bring soft skills.

Aegis Living is one company that has hired from outside the senior living industry. General Manager Phil Clough brings experience from Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. He sees service as the accurate and reliable delivery of what a resident expects, while hospitality is about how the experience in senior living makes a resident feel.

“It’s not just about executing; it’s about being the face of the community, dictating the ambiance and the culture and the welcome and the warmness of the community,” Clough said. “It’s about being out and being visible, being the chief marketing officer.”

Starling COO Megan Kennedy recently filled in for an executive director who was on maternity leave after years away from the role, and she said the experience showed her that the executive director role is now fast-paced and requires new levels of personalization to maintain resident satisfaction.

“When you have someone paying between $7,000 and $10,000 per month for rent and care, there’s a new level of expectation that comes with that,” Kennedy said.

More data, technology and pressure to personalize

As the executive director position becomes more focused on people and personalization, the role is also becoming more data-driven. Providers are sharing business intelligence dashboards, automated reports and other tech to improve on-the-fly decision-making, according to Senior Resource Group (SRG) COO Rob Henderson.

“With all this automation, with all of this great data that we’re getting proactively to make better decisions, you really have to understand it and be financially minded in that way,” Henderson said.

Executive directors must translate those priorities into stronger resident and employee experiences at the community level, Hartmayer said. Technology helps executive directors analyze information and generate reports that leaders once spent hours building manually, Pletcher noted.

“Technology can’t inspire a team,” Pletcher said. “It doesn’t replace trust or empathy or judgment or relationship building or visibility.”

Strong operating performance follows a strong resident and employee experience and is the result of what a leader and supporting team do daily at the community level, Clough said.

Executive directors today must also be the face of a building and become involved in the broader community in which an operator has properties, participating in events and outreach to build familiarity with prospects and families, according to Epoch Senior Living Executive Director Keven Defeyette.

“The executive director’s role, as it continues to evolve, is getting to be more important to be part of that greater community,” Defeyette said.

Business management skills and soft skills matter during times of operational disruption.

Senior Resource Group hired two executive directors who had extensive hospitality experience. One had taken on a community that saw repeated leadership turnover and was stuck at around 60% occupancy, Henderson said.

After six months, the community’s leadership started to improve operations, and it is now 98% occupied with an improved local reputation. At another SRG community, an executive director recruited from hospitality faced water pipe failures and other building maintenance issues. The executive director relied on proactive, frequent communication with residents and families, explaining what had happened and what the community was doing in response.

Recognizing executive directors with bonuses, personalized notes and rewards can help ease the pressure on community leaders today, Kennedy said. For example, the company paid for a flight for an executive director to visit family or take a weekend off.

How providers create the next generation of leaders

As hiring executive directors remains a challenge, senior living operators are establishing internal leadership development pathways to cultivate talent and build bench strength.

Providers are identifying department heads and frontline employees who have leadership potential and are exposing them to unfamiliar parts of the business. Pairing staff with longtime executive directors has also helped build more mentorship opportunities.

Atria’s Journeys leadership development framework starts with onboarding and continues with professional development throughout an employee’s career. Alongside Journeys, the company’s six-month Rise program is an Atria initiative that requires a nomination from a current leader and includes an executive coach, mentor and live training with a capstone project, Pletcher said.

“Our best option really is to grow our own. The challenge is not going to be just the occupancy coming in,” Pletcher said. “It’s going to be the leadership capacity to handle all of that occupancy.”

SRG recently developed an executive-director-in-training academy that will be rolled out to communities with two main tracks for associate executive directors and executive directors-in-training, with community staff able to complete the program in nine months to a year. To date, nearly half of SRG’s executive directors were promoted internally, with a long-term goal of reaching 90% of new ED hires coming from internal promotions, Henderson noted.

The program’s training and curriculum are intentionally rigorous to help the company’s strongest prospectsadvance, Henderson said. The program includes mentorship, personalized development plans and a capstone project geared toward solving existing operating challenges within SRG communities.

Exposing candidates to multiple areas of operations is critical for leadership development, according to Aegis Living COO Troy Nelson. The company’s Elevate leadership development program is designed to give future leaders complex tasks to meet the demands of the executive director role.

At Pegasus Senior Living communities, mentorship is a key feature of its executive-director-in-training program, which teaches rising leaders the skills needed for managing financial, budgetary and operational tasks associated with being an executive director, Pigott said.

“I think it’s evolving and changing into, instead of running the building. They’re leading the community and developing the people who run the building,” Pigott added.