My 2 weeks as an Entrepreneur In Residence at Glenwood Senior Living

A few months ago, I debriefed AgeTech NYC Survey takeaways about compliance challenges in senior living. Since then, I’ve been diligently learning more about senior living operational and compliance needs - and today, I’m writing to you from The Glenwood Community, a United Church Homes (UCH) community in Marietta, Ohio, where I’ve spent 2 weeks embedded as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR).

Michael Hughes, SEVP and Chief Transformation & Innovation Officer at UCH scoped the EIR program to place an entrepreneur inside a senior living community for two weeks to deeply understand workflows, shadow staff, and explore potential innovations. The EIR program was launched as part of United Church Homes’ Human Centered Design program, which comprises a philosophy of co-creation with those served and a problem-first approach to innovation. Past participants include Rania Nasis (Head of New Ventures @ Link-age Launch) and Peter Elbaor (Founder & CEO @ Ayla AI).

I got to know Mike through AgeTech NYC, and was floored by UCH’s generosity in opening The Glenwood Community to visiting entrepreneurs. When Mike and Senior Executive Director at The Glenwood Community, Linda Dailey suggested I come visit, I jumped at the opportunity to learn about senior living operational and compliance workflows firsthand. 

It’s been a pleasure and an honor to join the folks at The Glenwood Community for 2 weeks. The first week was all about listening and learning by shadowing staff; the second week was about testing and validating compliance needs. Here’s what I’ve discovered so far.

Welcome to The Glenwood Community

I arrived on Tuesday, January 7th, after Ohio was blanketed with a foot of snow. My journey involved a delayed flight to Pittsburgh and a snowy 2.5 hour drive into Marietta. When I finally reached guest suite 1217, I was greeted by a cozy independent living unit with mint green walls that was to be my home for the next 2 weeks. Coming from the New York rental market, the 2 bed / 2 bath with full kitchen and in-unit washer / dryer was the height of luxury.

From day one, I saw how deeply interconnected the Glenwood team and residents are. Most of the Glenwood leadership team knows every resident personally - and not just as a resident. Several of the staff have known residents most of their lives, and many have more than twenty years experience working in senior living! 

The team is the backbone of Glenwood’s culture. They take excellent care of the residents, but also of each other. Several give each other rides and take care of each others’ pets; one leader set up an empty unit as a cozy respite from the snow in case her staff were caught overnight in the snowstorm. The most championed Glenwood values are “Stewardship” and “Respect” - and it shows.

An Overflowing Community

One of the biggest milestones during my visit? Glenwood’s Assisted Living hit full occupancy for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic. The Independent Living side is expected to follow suit by quarter-end, for the first time ever. Occupancy levels are a key metric by which senior living communities are financially measured, and Glenwood’s strong occupancy speaks to the warm relationship between Glenwood residents and staff.

The team credits this success to a shift toward digital marketing. As a person in tech, I’m heartened to hear this - but I wonder if digital marketing may just be easier to attribute. Unlike traditional methods like radio ads or in-person events, digital outreach enables more precise tracking of leads and conversions. 

On the other end of the spectrum, “sales mail” video tours and a high-touch engagement strategy have played a key role in filling units. The best lead conversion comes from word-of-mouth marketing, residents recommending Glenwood to their friends, of course - and it’s mutually beneficial, as the residents love to have a full house bursting with friends.

Resident Life

While I was immersed in operations, Glenwood’s residents showed me what makes the community special.

I played Chinese Checkers, taught a lecture on the history of bellydance, and got a private museum tour from residents who are longtime docents at a local history museum.

Spending time with the residents made one thing clear: culture and human connection matter.

Residents who prank each other with hard boiled eggs on doorsteps and surprise each other with favorite ice cream flavors reminded me that senior living should be joyful. Honestly, they remind me of my college roommate and myself. Senior living is the only other time outside of college when we might be lucky enough to live down the hall from all of our best friends and spend our days learning and laughing with each other.

How Glenwood and Harmar Place Stay Ahead of Compliance

A major reason I’m here is to understand compliance workflows—and the overhead of physical paperwork I found at Glenwood and their sister skilled nursing facility (SNF), The Hamar Place Community, was eye-opening: 

1. Daily Pen-and-Paper Audits: Nursing leaders spend two hours every morning reviewing 24-hour reports from their clinical software (EHR) and handwritten logs to check for issues.

2. Mock Surveys Nearly Every Month: Compliance officers walk through the community to proactively prevent violations.

3. Manual Corrective Action Plans: Issues flagged in mock surveys result in weeks of paper-based auditing, staff training, and policy update tracking in Excel.

At the SNF community, I saw firsthand how a nurse spends half her day each month preparing for Quality Assurance (QAPI) meetings. Meanwhile, a medtech told me she spends a full workday per new resident manually typing printed hospital records into the clinical software. 

The most important QAPI program is one staff can commit to– Glenwood has found that pen and paper right now outperforms the “advanced” compliance tech solutions available today. This tells me that the tech industry needs to do better to make sure we’re building tools that are actually useful.

Glenwood has invested significantly in a proactive compliance program - but the existing tools and processes available to the industry simply don’t serve needs. Several other senior living communities I’ve gotten to know have estimated that the paperwork alone wastes 50-80 hours monthly for their administrators. When every hour spent on paperwork is an hour not spent with residents, senior living really can’t afford to have any inefficiency in a proactive quality assurance process.

What’s Next?

As my Entrepreneur in Residence experience learning about operational needs in senior living comes to an end, I’ll be turning my learnings into action. Stay tuned for more to come!

In the meantime, go watch A Man on the Inside on Netflix. It’s about a retiree who gets recruited by a detective to go undercover at a senior living community to help solve a crime - and my new favorite show, as a “Woman on the Inside”!