Front Porch Ceo: Disney Partnership, Arch Deal Part Of ‘build For What’s Next’ Strategy

Front Porch Communities and Services is preparing for new growth as the nonprofit senior living provider continues to refine its staffing model and development efforts.

In 2021, Front Porch affiliated with Covia Communities and in 2023, the organization named Sean Kelly as CEO.

Over the last two years, Front Porch crafted a strategic plan to create a revitalized culture focused on connection and inclusion, with the appointment of a Chief Culture and Community Officer to lead the effort. The strategic plan also centers on how to approach future growth, preparing for changes in competition locally and new development. Other areas of the plan focus on driving and supporting scale, including integrating operational systems and bringing in new financial forecasting.

To improve staffing, Front Porch partnered with the Disney Institute from the Walt Disney Corp. (NYSE: DIS) to bring best practices, crafting a unique plan for Front Porch to execute over the coming years.

“The point is to do it well and get further faster where we can, and this is proving to be a way that is absolutely getting us further faster,” Kelly said.

To support future development, Front Porch acquired Arch Development, a longtime partner on past projects, to bring more development services under the Front Porch banner. The organization is in the midst of design and construction on its ongoing development in Los Gatos, California. Known as Los Gatos Meadows, thisis a senior living community to be redesigned to include new, upgraded units, larger public spaces, safety improvements and greater sustainability across the redeveloped campus.

“We have the greatest opportunity to make sure that we’re maximizing the value of every dollar that we choose to invest,” Kelly told SHN during the most recent Transform podcast episode. “I think as a larger organization in particular, I don’t just feel compelled to have this expertise under our roof. I feel it’s wildly necessary.”

Editor’s Note: The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

On joining Front Porch in 2023:

One of the things that brought me to California was the idea that Covia and Front Porch came together two or three years ago. When I got here, the first work was not to integrate, but to discover who we are. We have locked in on who we believe we are and have returned to common values that begin with connection and focus on what is necessary to generate active communities where folks are constantly discovering what may be, while being aware of the realities that come with getting older.

Integration is not our work now. We are building for what is next, both from a system standpoint and from a cultural standpoint.

On Front Porch’s affiliation and future growth:

Mergers, acquisitions and organizational change are tough. I was blessed to come here after the transaction was over because I could be neutral and see the promise. I could see the value and benefits from each organization and the promise in what we might build together.

Over my first year here after I arrived in spring 2023, we recognized we did not have a larger framework to ask who we are, what we care about and what we hope for. We did a lot of intake across this organization among thousands of teammates, residents and constituents connected to Front Porch, learning where people’s sensibilities were.

We discovered many commonalities even though every person, department, community and geography is different. We need to honor them all and figure out how we fit under one umbrella and take advantage of the togetherness movement we might create.

We went on a mission to build a serious strategic plan that would identify what this new Front Porch is and what we intend. We gathered as a leadership team over about a year and in July 2024 we rolled out a strategic plan that focused on four areas.

First was culture. We recognized we have to depict, energize, activate and invite people into a culture where everybody has a voice, can feel an instrumental part [of the whole], is informed and has an opportunity to say what they think and what matters, so whatever we do is informed by the masses. We have smart people here and thousands of smart people working with us in the field, living with us in the communities and connecting with us in the wider world.

We identified a woman named Anna Hall who has become our culture and community officer. It is a unique position we were lucky to put next to this initiative to identify the larger cultural movement we hope to walk into.

We also recognized that if you want a culture where everybody can feel a part and grow we need leadership that is bought in and capable. Many would observe our leadership aspiration as servant leadership and recognize that it bubbles up in every part of this organization. We wanted leadership that is far from “because I said so” and very close to “how might we,” and that has been successful.

We also recognized that our leadership needs to be inward facing and outward facing. You have seen increased attention on Front Porch being alive, connected and participatory in the work in our sector. We have colleagues with amazing networks and a great body of work. We worked hard on getting our act together inside and we also recognized there is a lot to learn on the outside and value in being seen as a provocateur or thought leader, or at least an organization that is curious about where we might go as a company and as a sector.

Culture and leadership that understands that culture and how to drive it are the first two keys to driving performance, which is the third pillar in our strategic plan. One of the things that came from coming together with Covia was systems at scale. We are identifying systems at scale not just for what we are doing now but to be prepared for what may be next. With culture driven forward and integrated into everything we do and leadership that is comfortable and excited by it, we are seeing our performance metrics change in satisfaction, financial results and the usual things.

Then we get into growth. Culture, leadership and performance unlock the possibility for growth. Growth comes in two categories. The first is evolution. We had to evolve how we think about ourselves at a different scale and level of sophistication and look at our practices, properties and programs.

To do that we worked for about 18 months on discovery assessment and sophisticated financial forecasting and started to apply possibilities for future states that many of our communities are moving toward. In that work the need for in-house expertise around planning, development, construction management and analytics came to light. Arch joined our family around October 1, though we had been working together with Arch and other third party advisors for more than a year, and the fit has been amazing.

We have a clear view that real person-centered care – seeing every person for the totality of who they are and who they might be – matters. We want programming and health and well-being programs that match that. As a result, when we think about new partners, new merger opportunities, new things to bring into the family or new things to build, they have to touch many of the bases in our plans and speak to the culture we hope for and the performance we demand.

We are moving into a period of understanding what these opportunities are, where they fit, what priority they should take and how they match our larger aspiration, which is to have a greater impact in the world. On staffing and leadership development to support growth:

I think for Front Porch and for a lot of providers, this notion of leadership as giving of yourself first before offering information, action or direction is easy to understand intellectually but not always easy to execute.

We still live in a sector where much of the work with older people has been in the category of doing things to a person or for a person and that is not the way anymore. If we are going to meet the world where it is and where it wants to go, we have to see ourselves as facilitators doing things with folks and seeing things done by our residents and constituents across the board, no matter the level of living. To provide for that, there is a giving over of power that is sometimes antithetical to leadership but it is exactly what must be done.

We have begun working with the Vision Center, an organization designed to generate and grow university and provider partnerships. Not only do we have our own internal leadership programs, but we are working with university and college partners to build programs where folks can leave here with the imprimatur of a college or university. It could be USC, San Diego State, Berkeley, Rutgers or others. It will depend, but we think that is important.

In the meantime, we have put a strong emphasis on training. We have a culture and community division led by Anna Hall and inside that division a learning and development group. Learning and development is designed to build leadership programs and training programs across the board, top down and ground up. Just recently, we had a working team formed from selected folks from every aspect of our organization, people working in dining services, hospitality maintenance, clinical care administration and more … One of their charges was to develop a leadership profile for Front Porch. These folks are taking eight weeks out of their lives in addition to their day jobs and are committed to discovering what we might do in identifying a leadership profile that is a mold for our leadership development division.

I should mention that the work I described is born of a larger initiative with the Disney Institute. They are helping us systematize good practice. A lot of what you talk about in leadership, great communications or great operations can fall flat in training because it sounds like common sense. If you want to be a great leader, person or colleague, you want to listen. If you want a great health and well-being program, you want someone engaging with the wider audience and asking people what is important to them. That sounds like common sense, but is it common practice? Our work is designed to take these things that are great, that some people might say are common sense, and ask whether they are common practice.

We are looking to make best practice common practice across the board and we are relying on our colleagues not just from the front office but throughout the organization to help make this happen. We are relying on our residents to do the same.

On Front Porch’s Disney Institute partnership:

It was about two years ago, as we were building out this culture work, that we realized scale is awesome but scale done well is what is required. We recognized we have a lot of expertise in house but there are organizations that have scaled a consistent way of delivering joyful, delightful experiences to their colleagues and customers, Disney among them.

We discovered that Disney was uniquely open to co-designing a plan for us that has become ours, and they have been incredible partners. The amount of work over the last two years to design this program … has been extraordinary. Our chief transformation officer is another unique feature we have, someone who can take stock of where we are, see where we may go and imagine all of the dots that must be connected in between. To imagine that in advance of laying out the game plan is rare and essential.

It has been a two-year odyssey to get to this point and even as we build we are already seeing the benefits. Yesterday we had 60 people in our corporate office presenting work born of this initiative and you could feel the enthusiasm, clear alignment around where we are heading and the excitement and pride in being part of this bigger thing that folks are making. It was tangible and palpable.

People ask me all the time about the reputation of the sector. We had an incredible film, Familiar Touch, made at one of our communities, Villa Gardens in Pasadena. The film has taken on a life of its own. We have been strong advocates for it after we saw the amazing art that came out of it and the pride it has given to the residents and team members who made that movie with Sarah Friedland. It has changed their game. The film is being seen at LeadingAge and at NIC and has been shown in 20 countries.

On Arch Development acquisition:

. We spend a lot of money every year on maintenance, repair replacement, renovation, repositioning and recycling independent living units doing all the stuff you need to do. We have incredible talent around the organization but we did not have specific expertise. We recognized from a larger systems perspective that we had a lot to gain if we had point folks with the expertise to understand not just design process and what might be coming down the pike but ways to prioritize and to match what is needed with what might be available to expand into a market, and then not just build the contracts but administer them.

Frank Muraca, who has been the leader of Arch for over 20 years, is as good a man as I know. His expertise is well understood across the sector.

… I think it was providence that brought the right personalities together when Arch was willing to put a stake in the ground for its next evolution and be part of Front Porch through the acquisition.

On the industry’s need for future development:

We needed to make sure we were squeezing 100 cents of value out of every dollar we spend internally. Number two, we need to be ready to take advantage of the development opportunities before us and be ready to build the opportunities we choose.

The development environment is a handful, especially around land use in strong markets where entitlements are more difficult. With solid operators like Front Porch and others able to show what we can do and how we are good corporate citizens of a larger community, not an enclave, that goes a long way.

The financial markets will be the financial markets and construction costs will be the construction costs. At the end of the day, if we cannot get maximum value for the dollars we invest we are out. With Arch under our wing walking beside us we have the greatest opportunity to make sure that we’re maximizing the value of every dollar that we choose to invest. I think as a larger organization in particular, I don’t just feel compelled to have this expertise under our roof. I feel it’s wildly necessary.

On Front Porch’s Los Gatos memory care development:

It’s cooking. Earlier this calendar year we received the approvals we needed to move. The market continues to be incredibly strong. Competitive providers in the Los Gatos and Saratoga area have waiting lists as long as both my arms, which is a clear indicator. Our property is unique, powerful and entitled. We have been working with Perkins Eastman for a long time to work through those entitlements, and the design has changed over the last 12 to 15 months to make sure what we are building is future state, not what was imagined 10 years ago.

We have also acquired a piece of property that is connected to the Los Gatos campus and creates physical connectivity to downtown Los Gatos. We will be opening the next stage of marketing in the spring. The site is being cleared now, and we are demolishing old buildings. We expect to begin priority deposits and market awareness in the spring of next year. Where we go next will depend on how quickly those units are taken up in the marketplace and on getting the final building permit.

We are building a connected community. At Front Porch we fixate on the importance of connection. Anything you want to do in this world, whether two people are talking across a virtual platform, meeting for a cup of coffee or moving into a retirement community and meeting new friends, starts with connection. We want programming built out so folks are connected, so we are building the community before the community is built. We have a building designed to be a community center that will attract people into our community and make us part of the greater community right out of the gate.

We want partnerships with every organization that is relevant to the work we do. We want to be seen as leaders and educators in the business of memory care. We want to serve informal caregivers and provide additional access to lifelong learning and health and well being. We want this community to be seen as a gem in the larger Los Gatos area, not just an enclave. The intentional connectivity and partnerships we will build with other organizations will help us offer as great a menu as possible, not just for folks who decide to move to us but for folks with whom we associate.

Los Gatos is not just going to become a really awesome community. It will become an exemplar and a measuring tool we will use as we build out all of the other programming across the portfolio.

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