Kendal Corp. Ceo: Senior Living Must Disrupt Itself Before Other Industries Do

According to Kendal Corporation CEO Vassar Byrd, demand alone will not spell success for the senior living industry.

The incoming baby boomer generation, numbering about 76 million people in total, is bringing with it a sea change of new preferences and needs. If senior living operators don’t cater to those preferences, including by making senior living more affordable, they will potentially struggle, no matter the level of demand ahead. And if they don’t find a way to disrupt what they are currently doing, they might find that another company or industry does it for them.

“That’s an interesting piece of information, but it does not make a successful future. I think if we don’t disrupt ourselves, we’re going to be disrupted from the outside,” Byrd said during an appearance on the most recent episode of Senior Housing News’ Transform podcast.

The company has prepared for this moment by bolstering its organizational chart and launching new concepts that reflect the changing tastes of the boomers. Kendal recently added a chief information officer to work alongside the company’s existing chief technology officer to review the company’s technology platform to improve staff efficiency and data collection. 

Kendal’s top leaders, led by Byrd, are approaching operations through a three-step process: “Stop, evaluate and reset.”

The Newark, Delaware-based senior living company recently opened its first Zen-inspired community in partnership with the San Francisco Zen Center, Enso Village, with other Enso-brand communities under development including Enso Verde in Simi Valley, California with a projected 2028 opening. 

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

Update on Kendal’s current portfolio and past CEO experience: 

The Kendal Corporation has been around since the early 80s. We’re a not-for-profit Quaker-based organization supporting senior living providers across the country. We currently have 10 organizations in eight states. So the majority of those organizations are CCRCs or life plan communities, but we do have one continuing care at home, Kendal at Home, and one community that only offers licensed care and another that has levels on site but is not a life plan community. 

What attracted me to Kendal was understanding the unique value proposition they offer from the perspective of a former operator. What I truly believe in, and what drew me in, is the power of each individual community to transform how people live their lives together.

What’s attracted me to Kendal is really understanding the unusual value proposition that they offer as a former operator and this is the important part, I really believe in the power of each individual community to transform the way people live their lives together. So Kendal exists only to support those communities to deliver the best experience they possibly can for their residents and their staff.

We provide support in HR, in finance, facility management, culinary and housekeeping services, marketing, IT, governance and we have a group purchasing program. But what each community needs is specific to that community, and not everybody uses everything. So by partnering with us, they get the benefits of scale as if they were part of a giant organization, a much larger team, and at a much lower cost. At the same time, we do not swamp their identity or their culture or their values. So I think it’s really unreasonable having come from a single site. It’s unreasonable to expect a single site have everything they need on staff. That’s crazy. Our business has gotten super complex.

A lot of people spend a lot of money on consultants, and I think it’s a stronger relationship. When we work with someone like Kendal as a partner, we have a deep understanding of each other so that we can sort of be beside each other as we need things. And the only purpose of Kendall is to support the affiliates. So instead of standardizing them, we support their independent identity and their culture. So from my perspective, I’m not building an independent consulting company.

It is all to provide support to affiliates and that goal is to allow them to do only what they can do and that’s building their culture, building their community, telling their story, creating partnerships. That’s not something you can outsource. But there’s a lot of other things that you can, and why not? We can do it for multiple organizations at a much lower cost.

How Kendal differentiates its communities across markets:

We are known for continuing education. So our communities are often in smaller towns with colleges that alone gives it such a unique flavor. So there’s music versus engineers versus physicists, like it really makes a difference. So I think that we’re able to really help support the individual identity of each community. But why spend your resources and your time doing stuff that really anyone can do when time is precious, you need to spend it doing what only you can do, and that’s telling your story.

How Kendal’s Quaker roots inform its senior living operations:

That is one reason why I took this job. I’m a big communicator, and I believe in the value of a diverse team. So the Quaker value of inclusion, or inviting the stranger to the table is one of the phrases that you’ll hear me use a lot. That’s deeply resonant with me. And I think the structure of consensus decision making is harder than you think, but also more valuable than you can imagine. So it’s worth the investment. Our Quaker heritage also informs a less hierarchical structure, and I think you know, you need to get input from every part of the community and everyone that you touch, and it’s super limiting if you decide that you are top down, or that you only talk to your executive team, or anything like that. I think that the flatter the organizational structure, the better that aligns with greater values as well. We’re super non hierarchical, and I’m actually part of the some of the things I’m doing now is sort of rationalizing the org chart at Kendal.

We don’t really need a bunch of VPS. I don’t understand the Presidential nomenclature is at all. We are not General Motors, you know. So, so we’re all working together. We’re all team based. I like having mixing it up as much as I can between people at different levels, different, you know, content experts, because that’s where there’s some magic stuff that can happen. You have unusual solutions to issues that you didn’t think of. And so I think that’s a big Quaker thing. I always would rather invest in results, in relationships, not titles.

n my perspective, I like to think of it in terms of going forward, we’re creating a league of experts that will serve Kendall affiliates to strengthen their own ability to grow and serve their own missions. So we’re never mandating. We are supporting each affiliates, unique and interesting and creative, and we want to partner with them to make a difference in how older adults experience the last band of their lives. And the more diverse of the voices in the room, the more likely we are to make a deep experience that touches more people and that’s it.

I think it’s interesting, East Coast, West Coast, single-site, multi-site, there’s a lot of different variables in play and I think it can be more tightly sometimes on the East Coast, and people feel like their positional authority is really important and so that’s definitely something that I have dealt with this last year, where as you get to know who I am. I do not care where you sit or what your title is. If you’ve got a great idea I want you to talk to so that feels very resonant with it, with our with our Quaker foundation.

On Kendal using its Quaker values to improve staffing:

I think it’s making people less uptight. I think it’s just easier to be human and and form a team that has ownership over an issue. That’s where I think the real important change is, it’s, it is a shared accountability. And I think that the other thing that is important is in our relationship with our affiliates, that we are mirroring their organizational structure as we move down the road, versus appearing to be some corporate office. And we’ve never acted as a corporate office. We are not set up that way.

So I thought that was kind of odd, that those titles of things had evolved over time to feel more top down, because we are. We are just another affiliate in the system of affiliates, and my goal is to get every affiliate to show up for each other and to share best practices and be there for their colleagues and that is very much not a hierarchical experience, so anything I can do to make sure that we are walking the talk and that includes titles.

That’s important because it makes the whole system function more as one giant team and that’s not just the Kendal Corporation, it’s the whole system.

On 2025 priorities for Kendal:

it’s true for for a lot of companies who’ve been around for decades, and certainly in the post Covid-era, you just gotta stop. You have to evaluate. You have to reset. And I think you should do that on a regular basis. This, this never you know to be at the top of your game. You can’t assume that what got you here is going to get you to the next level. That’s the most important thing.

Man, people get comfortable. It’s like things are going pretty good and you stop really trying to have fresh eyes. We have reorganized how we deliver services, so we brought in some great new team members, and those people are working with colleagues who’ve been in the system and have incredible experience within the system so together that creates the best of both worlds—fresh eyes and institutional knowledge.

It’s created a lot of energy so that I would say that 2025, we’re coming in with a lot of energy. We’re focused on delivering the best service and support that our system has experiences and some of those areas of focus we have targeted this year is really around development for the affiliates.

[Including] redeveloping their campuses, helping them with their growth satellite campuses. I would say almost every one of the Kendal affiliates have wait lists of several hundreds of people, one has over 800 people on a wait list. So, obviously, people want what they’re giving them.

Another area, we created an extremely strong IT team. We’re bringing on a CIO along with our existing CTO to partner in technology development, execution, management and training as well as providing a sophisticated approach to the businsess management of IT service delivery. So the goal is an extremely high level of affiliate satisfaction at the same time that we are ensuring a very secure system that’s poised for growth, where we can evaluate new technologies and do some [research and development] because really the issue is, as a single site CEO, there’s no way you can possibly evaluate all of the tech that comes your way and lot of it is hot air and I think you have to be careful. 
It’s a crucial infrastructure, just like water, and it has to have its own strategic plan and capital focus. 

On the importance of building a comprehensive technology platform:

We can do more to create that secure foundation because the health care industry is a target all the time for health information records. It’s a scary thing. It’s crazy not to really target that and make sure you are rock solid.

It’s just making sure that we’re not taking these for granted. I think it’s really easy over time that things evolve and then all of a sudden, maybe you’re not, you don’t have a standard set setup, and it’s harder to fix things. So we’re just making sure, and that’s that’s the upside of having a new leader in any organization is, like a lot of questions, how does this work? Is this really the best thing we can do? So that is great, and we have some smart people helping us. But beyond that, then what more can we do? And I’m very interested in smart home technology. What does that look like as a package?

So that’s where we can use our expertise to help figure out what makes sense. And if you don’t have the money to and it’s so much money, how do you get started? So what would be the first two things you want to do, and then what’s your strategic plan for that’s it.

I worry a lot about not having the resources or the time to think about the long term integration plan, the long term implementation plan, and how do you train everyone so that you’re sure that people are using the technology you just spent a lot of money on. So if you can fail in so many ways, so having a great team focusing on it’s very important for everybody’s operating efficiency, at the very least.

On scaling Kendal in the future to meet demand:

As we help our affiliates grow, we also expect the system to grow, so we’re interested in additional scale with the right partners. We are not interested in growth for growth’s sake—that’s ridiculous. I think that’s a horrible way to run a company, we have to be strategic and thoughtful. I know that a collective of forward thinking organizations focused on the same thing, on improving the lives of the people we serve and the employees who provide that service, that can make a real difference in the industry.

So scale is not really even just on the expense sharing side, but it’s it can have a profound influence on the quality of life side. We have great peer groups. I think that we’ve where we have created a learning organization here. So we want to find additional partners to continue to make that difference. We’re primarily CCRCs right now, and as much as I love that model, I think it’s a great model for so many reasons, it serves a small slice of people and so what more can we do?

On expanding senior living models to meet affordable demand:

We are not trying to do CCRC light. I feel that looks and sounds like we’re not providing something ore we’re taking something away. So, I don’t want anyone to feel that way. We’re trying to build something completely new and so maybe it doesn’t care a CCRC license, that can be super-limiting in some states.

When we’re trying to make more choices available to more people at a much wider variety of price points, those regulations can really add significant costs, and it locks us into a more restrictive structure. The issue is that traditional CCRCs are loaded with costs that make it very difficult for this to be a reasonable option, even though it’s a wonderful one to any but a small percentage of older adults.

Fundamentally, what we do is build community, so let’s deconstruct some of the assumptions around that so we can get at what makes community. I would say that the intentional choice to share the road together is profound, deep and meaningful, and it doesn’t require anything other than that commitment to build community. So you got to start from scratch.

So for instance, some of the areas that I’m looking at, rather than a full dining service, which is incidentally one of the most expensive components of both building and operating a new community. Can we create a space for community cooking or gathering to eat, a way to share meals that looks different? Maybe there are community restaurants or food truck partners as part of that solution. Maybe community meals are made by the community itself to share. Maybe there are grocery store drop offs of meal kits. Maybe not every day it looks the same. So we’ve really got to think about it differently.

Can we spark other providers to focus on filling gaps in service in a particular market? Can we leverage our relationships and some of the special sauce of the not for profit, work and link arms to provide a deep choice for people we all serve. And when you think about those things, how people, how much more economic diversity could we serve through a different approach? So I just feel like we got a little locked into something that worked great, feels great, but you have to own a home, have significant investments, but maybe we’re beyond the age-restriction itself.

What more can we do? I think that there’s there’s we’re only just scratching the surface of that question. So for us, I really think that that opportunity is something that we are very well poised to take advantage of and to start working with and that’s not only economic diversity, but rural communities and there are so many people that are left out of the boxes that we’ve all agreed is senior living so I think there’s more to it.

I really like the co-housing movement. It lacks what’s the follow through, and people age there, but that’s really interesting. So what more can we do? How can we open it up as a model to different variations?

Latest update on the Enso, zen-inspired brand:

What’s really exciting about the Enso projects is working with a co-sponsor that shares our values, that adds a lot to our understanding. I’m very proud to work with San Francisco Zen Center, and I feel that that we both, both organizations, learn from and share with each other, so that we are both growing and deepening our understanding. So that has been phenomenal.

Enso Village is right on track. We’ve got a new executive director there, we’re filling up and everything seems to be going very, very well. Enso Verde is in its marketing and pre-construction phase so I can tell you that there are some really phenomenal people that have already signed up to become residents there, so that’s pretty cool.

I think Kendal and Zen-inspired aging, I think the focus on the spiritual richness is long-overdue. I feel like the whole industry moved to this amenity focus and we’re not people moving into hotels.

I think with Enso, we’re explicitly focusing on the sort of connected humanity for everyone becuase you’re choosing to spend that time with each other so it’s more than just mindfulness practice, it’s really intentional living and I think that message has huge resonance. It’s not just an affinity product.

Our greatest untapped resource is the people we serve and I think it’s important to step beyond senior living as a cruise ship and focus on the power of the people who’ve chosen to live together and make a change in their environment, so I see this in sustainability work, so that’s a phenomenal opportunity to work alongside residents to research prioritize, find funding for and implement major changes and how we build and operate our communites.

Many of those folks have started carbon footprints as a basic starting point so that everybody understands where they are at. So I would say in more standard words, you can say it’s about capturing the demographic that wants to be engaged in lifelong learning, personal growth and engagement. Or we can just say they are warriors for our joint existential soul, whatever talks to you on the day that you’re thinking about it, but it’s a big deal.

I think that that is the future of senior living. That is the future of building community together. And at some point maybe we stopped calling it senior living, and we call it intentional living, or community living, or something that is more inclusive of different ages and all kinds of opportunities.

How the Enso brand can aid in creating intergenerational opportunities:

We have a strong tradition of intergenerational service already. Many of our communities have both childcare and relationships with colleges so you’ve got people at all different ages, but I think that makes a lot of sense. It’s another expression of connection and I think it’s a welcoming environment for all ages. Wouldn’t it be great to have older people and younger poeple having a spiritual experience together at the same time? I mean, that’s a really phenomenal concept to me. 

On outlook for 2025 and beyond:

That’s a tough question, and I am not going to give you happy talk, I promise. I think it’s very simplistic to lean on the demographics. I hear people doing that all the time. That’s an interesting piece of information, but it does not make a successful future. I think if we don’t disrupt ourselves, we’re going to be disrupted from the outside.

That’s something that has been said before but I don’t know that people really take it in. Baby boomers and Gen X are a different consumer than anyone before them, so we had better have different options. That’s it, and that’s everything I have talked about. Of course, high-performing CCRCs will always be full, but that is a small slice of humanity and I think that we can do better, and if we dont, the senior living version of Uber is just around the corner.

It’s a little [bit of] who’s coming for your lunch, and get on it. So it is exciting, but not easy, which is a great combination, honestly.

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