Senior Living Industry Starts 2025 With Flurry Of New Executive Appointments

This story is part of your SHN+ subscription

Senior living companies have hit the ground running in 2025 revamping their leadership org charts as a new generation of leaders prepares to take the industry into its next chapter.

Companies including Welltower (NYSE: WELL), United Church Homes, Distinctive Living, Pegasus Senior Living and Watermark Retirement have in 2025 made executive-level leadership changes, two of which appointed new co-presidents.

According to Chicago-based outplacement and career transition firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, more than 1,800 CEOs across multiple industries resigned or retired last year, an increase of 19% from 2023. This marks the highest total of executive turnover since the company tracked executive change in 2002.

It wasn’t long ago that SHN Senior Editor Tim Regan opined that 2022 would be “the year of executive turnover in senior living,” and multiple companies have named new executive leaders since then.

It’s not hard to see why companies are appointing new leadership given the long demand runway ahead and the need for creative solutions to meet that demand. But if the pace at which leaders named successors in early 2025 continues, the coming year could shape up to be as active or even more active than previous years with regard to senior living leadership transitions.

In this week’s members-only SHN+ Update, I analyze the current state of senior living executive turnover and offer the following:

• Tracking recent executive appointments in senior living 

• Inside challenges and opportunities that will continue to drive this trend in 2025

• What’s behind a recent “spike” in health care CEO exits 

Industry increases pace of new executive appointments

It’s no secret that senior living companies face multiple big challenges and opportunities in the coming months and years. The oldest baby boomers turn 80 in 2025, but operators must create communities that can attract them – and with monthly rental rates at which the boomers can afford.

The senior living industry is full of trailblazing leaders who have created new concepts and models. But operators are embracing the idea that they must usher in new executive leadership to get to the industry’s next chapter.

In the last few weeks, senior living companies have made a flurry of announcements that I think fit with that theme.

On Jan. 2, Toledo, Ohio-based real estate investment trust (REIT) Welltower (NYSE: WELL) announced the promotion of COO John Burkart to vice chairman and named Nikhil Chaudhri and Tim McHugh as co-presidents. According to Welltower CEO Shankh Mitra, the moves reflect the company’s “cultivation of the next generation of talent.”

Only a few days later, United Church Homes announced the retirement of CEO Kenneth Daniel, with President Ken Young set to take the reins next month. The same week, Freehold, New Jersey-based Distinctive Living named two new vice presidents to further sales and marketing efforts. The move created two new roles from a single position and reorganized the operator’s executive team in anticipation of new growth in 2025.

Then, on Tuesday, Dallas, Texas-based senior living provider Pegasus Senior Living named executives Rich Williams and Wade Mullis as co-presidents, with both holding onto their respective COO and CFO titles. Pegasus CEO Chris Hollister told SHN at the time that the leadership announcements were part of the company’s effort to prepare for a changing future.

It’s notable to me that both Welltower and Pegasus named new co-presidents. Co-leadership was a trend I followed in 2024, and one that operators believe is continuing into 2025. For instance, Gardant Management Solutions Co-President Greg Echols told me he thinks that even more senior living companies will divvy up leadership roles among multiple people in 2025, such as through co-CEOs or co-presidents, in order to confront the industry’s challenges and seize opportunities.

Health care CEO turnover ‘spike’ emerges

A “spike” of executive turnover has emerged in the health care and related products industries, according to the most recent Challenger, Gray & Christmas executive turnover report.

As of November, 2024, the company had tracked 230 CEO exits in the space, “a significant increase from 165 in 2023.” While that total includes executive turnover at health systems and other non-senior-living businesses, fewer than half of CEO exits in that time frame, 101, were linked to hospitals, representing a decrease from 2023.

Among all of the CEOs who vacated roles in 2024, “stepping down” was a top reason and linked to 551 exits, while “retirement” was linked to 445 CEO exits in the year.

“The observed rapid shifts in leadership appointments suggest that boards are proactively recalibrating their executive teams to align with the changing industry landscape,” reads a Challenger, Gray & Christmas post from December.

Other recent data also shows the industry’s evolving leadership trend. A 2024 Ziegler 200 report found that, at least on the nonprofit side of senior living, the average CEO had a tenure of nine years. Just six years earlier in 2018, the average nonprofit senior living CEO tenure was slightly over a decade.

Looking ahead, I think the demands of the business are getting more complex, and that will drive other companies to consider cultivating new talent and ideas at the top echelons.

For example, operators are looking for creative solutions to grow as development remains hard to accomplish and the industry’s so-called supply gap widens as a result. And it’s notable to me that three of the operators naming new executive-level leadership – Distinctive Living, Pegasus Senior Living and Watermark – were doing so specifically with the prospect of new growth on the horizon, including potentially via development.

The middle-market also represents a sizable opportunity for operators, not to mention a big challenge requiring new thinking for meeting it. Although multiple companies have put forth new and promising ideas for more affordability in senior living, so far none have deployed those ideas at national scale.

This recent rapid pace of executive turnover also signals to me that organizations have emerged from their challenges of the Covid-era and are finally able to plan for the future of meeting demand for the baby boomers and even beyond that.

Of course, as we’ve written about before, handoffs are not always smooth, and the challenge ahead will be for these leaders to keep their eye on the collective ball as the industry emerges into its next evolution.

The post Senior Living Industry Starts 2025 With Flurry of New Executive Appointments appeared first on Senior Housing News.