Assisted Living Executive

for a great company. They have believed in me, mentored me, and let me shine,” she says.

Now she has turned that light onto the task of preparing the visuals for the new community. Surrounded by catalogs, fabric swatches, carpet samples, pieces of artwork, and sections of flooring, she sits in her office thinking about aesthetics.

While colors and textures are important, they are not the first stop for Scardina. Her initial priorities are the space and the people in it. “We are meeting with the architects on a regular basis to finetune spaces, looking for ways to take what we have done in the past and make it better,” she says. “For instance, one of our additions that we have not had in the past is a meditation space. We are creating a space that allows people to feel comfortable, whatever they believe in.

“It always starts with the needs of our seniors. We start by asking our

“it always starts with the needs of our seniors. then we look at how to create something interesting in that space, something that can appeal to all.” —Andrina scardina

teams in the community, is this a need?
Then we look at how to create some-
thing interesting in that space, some-
thing that can appeal to all.”
Typically this means letting the ex-
perts lead design. In memory care, for
example, Scardina is busy consulting
with the wellness leader to discuss how
design might enhance programming.
What are calming colors and lights?

“My responsibility goes to color,
flooring, wood finishes—all the aesthet-
ics, where you walk in and say, ‘Wow,
this place is incredible.’ But if it’s
plumbing, I’m not going to know a lot
about that. If it’s kitchen, I’ll pull in our
culinary department,” Scardina says.
“They are the experts and we want to
follow their lead as much as possible.”
Simultaneous with her design plan-
ning, Scardina is also preparing to go
shopping. She is developing a list of
vendors based on price, quality, and
ability to deliver. “We will be making
huge purchases so I want us to be lined
up for inventory, all the granite and the
paint, the tile, the curtains, and so on.
We are custom designing or custom or-
dering all of these items, and that takes
awhile,” she says.

Assembling the Right team

With the clock ticking, Senior Vice President, Community Operations, Andrew Badoud has been thinking about, predictably enough, operations. In the early stages, this has less to do with how the place will be run than with who will run it.

First comes the regional salesperson, who by early spring had been identified but not yet promoted into that position. “We did interview some outside candidates, but we had someone already with us who was succeeding in her current role and showing leadership in that role. We want someone who can motivate, be strategic in their thinking, understand how to bring business in,” Badoud says. He shares the search for a sales leader with Graham.

The next key position will be the executive director. Badoud is actively looking for good candidates, even though he won’t make the hire until four or five months prior to opening.

In the interim, “the ideal situation would be to have our current executive director in that area be able to share her skills or provide some administrative and operational support to the team as a local person,” he says. “The trick with that is, that executive director already has a 190-unit campus. In order to free her up, we would need to backfill a lot

“it becomes a lot smoother transition if we are already established in the market before the lights are turned on.” —toni graham

of what she does.”
What to do in the meantime? Ba-
doud is busy grooming. He oversees
an internal training program, prepar-
ing an existing associate director and
a director of residential services for
future leadership roles. It’s a year-long
program and an ongoing piece of Ba-
doud’s prelaunch efforts. One of those
candidates could end up in charge of
the new community.

The new community is never too far down on Badoud’s daily to-do list. He’s engaged in ongoing discussions with Graham as well as Carlton’s President Philip Scott and a financial analyst.

Beyond laying out the roadmap, the team does a lot of worst-case-scenario work. What if the market shows signs of not evolving as planned? What if the right people can’t be found? “There are all kinds of things that get in the way,” Badoud says. “Larger companies may have a startup person who coordinates a lot of that. But if you don’t have that, then as a senior operations team you are spending a lot of time just making sure things are in place.” ❏