The Vice President of Resident Experience provides enterprise-wide leadership and strategic direction for the resident experience across the Experience Senior Living portfolio, ensuring residents have meaningful opportunities for connection, choice, purpose, personal growth, and belonging throughout daily life. This role provides strategic leadership for resident engagement, lifestyle programming, transportation, family and community connection, and other key elements of the resident journey. The Vice President establishes enterprise standards and scalable approaches that recognize each resident's individual interests, abilities, preferences, routines, relationships, and goals.
Working in close partnership with Operations, Memory Care, Health & Wellness, Culinary, Sales & Marketing, and community leadership, the Vice President will integrate ESL's mission, Wellness philosophy and brand promise into everyday resident experience. Through leadership development, innovation, resident feedback performance measurement, and cross-functional collaboration, this role will continually advance a differentiated and holistic resident experience across the organization.
Key Responsibilities:Resident Experience, Engagement & Holistic Wellness
- Serve as the organization's senior subject-matter leader for Resident Experience, identifying emerging trends, innovative practices, technologies, and strategic partnerships that advance ESL's Experience Standards, holistic Wellness philosophy, and overall resident experience.
- Establish and maintain portfolio-wide Experience Standards that support ESL's holistic Wellness philosophy and promote physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, and purposeful well-being.
- Champion personalized experiences that reflect each resident's interests, abilities, preferences, routines, relationships, culture, life experiences, and personal goals.
- Develop strategies that promote choice, independence, purpose, connection, personal growth and belonging.
- Establish expectations for meaningful engagement to be integrated throughout residents' daily lives and not limited to scheduled programs, activities, or events.
- Establish Experience Standards for daily engagement, events, outings, transportation, volunteer opportunities, intergenerational experiences, lifelong learning, and community partnerships.
- Partner across disciplines to ensure resident experiences and Wellness opportunities are accessible, adaptable, and responsive to varying abilities, preferences, and inclusive of all levels of care.
- Establish meaningful measures of resident experience that evaluate engagement, participation, satisfaction, connection, belonging, choice, and other indicators of resident well-being.
- Use resident and family feedback, experience data, community observations, participation trends, and operational performance to evaluate effectiveness and drive continuous improvement.
- Serve as the organization's senior subject matter expert and advocate for resident experience, bringing forward emerging trends, innovative practices, technologies, and partnerships.
Cross -functional Alignment
- Partner with Health & Wellness and Memory Care leadership to ensure Experience Standards support the whole person and are appropriately individualized across levels of care, functional abilities, and cognitive abilities.
- Collaborate with the Vice President of Memory Care to ensure ESL's Experience Standards are thoughtfully adapted for residents living with cognitive change while maintaining alignment with ESL's overall Wellness philosophy and resident experience expectations.
- Partner with Health & Wellness leadership to ensure resident experiences support individual abilities, health needs, independence, and overall well-being.
- Promote shared accountability across Resident Experience, Memory Care, Health & Wellness, Culinary, Operations, and community leadership for delivering a cohesive resident experience.
Experience Performance Measurement
- Establish portfolio-wide measures of resident experience and engagement that extend beyond activity attendance and participation.
- Evaluate resident and family feedback, engagement, satisfaction, connection, belonging, choice, participation, and other indicators of resident experience.
- Establish reporting processes that allow community and organizational leaders to identify trends, opportunities, and areas requiring additional support.
- Use data, resident feedback, community observations, and operational outcomes to continuously evaluate and evolve ESL's Experience Standards.
Experience Leadership & Talent Development
- Establish clear leadership competencies, performance expectations, and accountability standards for Resident Experience leaders..
- Coach and develop, , Resident Experience leaders while establishing succession strategies and an internal pipeline of future leaders.
- Develop education, tools, resources,and competency expectations that enable community teams to consistently translate ESL's Experience Standards into daily practice.
- Establish mechanisms for Resident Experience leaders across the portfolio to share successful practices, innovation, resources, and lessons learned.
- Promote accountability for the consistent application of Experience Standards while allowing communities to personalize experiences based on their residents and local markets. Experience Innovation & Continuous Improvement Identify and evaluate innovative experiences, practices, partnerships, technologies, and resources that enhance resident well-being, engagement, connection, choice, independence, and quality of life.
- Lead the evaluation and optimization of resident engagement platforms and other technology used to enhance, measure, and personalize the resident experience.
• Develop scalable signature experiences that reflect ESL's brand, Wellness philosophy, and Experience Standards.
• Establish processes for piloting, measuring, refining, and scaling new resident experience initiatives.
- Maintain awareness of emerging trends across senior living, hospitality, wellness, entertainment, technology, and consumer experience.
- Evaluate resident engagement platforms and other technologies that support personalization, communication, measurement, and the resident experience.
- Partner with Sales & Marketing to communicate ESL's Experience philosophy and differentiators accurately and authentically.
Growth & New Development
- In partnership with Development, Desigh, Operations, Sales and Maketing, Culinacy and wellness team to provide resident experience and Wellness expertise during new community planning and design to ensure environments, amenities, and experience spaces support connection, choice, engagement, independence, purpose, and belonging.
- Develop the Experience Framework for new communities based on resident profiles, market demographics, community amenities, local opportunities, and ESL Experience Standards.
- Provide strategic oversight through pre-opening, opening, and stabilization to support successful implementation of ESL's Resident Experience and Wellness philosophy.
- Partner with Sales & Marketing to ensure ESL's resident experience philosophy, Experience Standards, and differentiators are accurately and consistently communicated.
Resident, Family & Community Connection
- Establish strategies that strengthen meaningful relationships and a sense of connection and belonging among residents, families, team members, and the broader community.
- Establish Experience standards and resources for family engagement, communication, education, and meaningful involvement throughout the resident journey .
- Advance intergenerational, volunteer, educational, cultural, and lifelong learning and community partnership opportunities that support residents' interests, purpose, growth, and connection. .
- Partner with community leadership to create meaningful opportunities for residents to remain connected to organizations, resources, relationships and experiences within their local communities. .
- Promote opportunities for residents to contribute their knowledge, talents, interests and experiences within the community and beyond.
- Ensure resident and family feedback i consistently gathered, evaluated, and incorporated into Experience Standards, strategic priorities and continuous improvement initiatives.
Cross-Functional Partnership & Operational Integration
- Partner with Operations, Memory Care, Health & Wellness, Culinary, Sales & Marketing, and other functional leaders to ensure ESL's Experience Standards and holistic Wellness philosophy are integrated across all aspects of community life.
- Collaborate with Culinary to ensure dining, hospitality, social connection and culinary experiences, support broader resident experience..
- Partner with Health & Wellness to ensure resident experiences support the whole person and are appropriately individualized across varying levels of care, functional abilities, preferences, and health needs.
- Collaborate with Memory Care leadership to ensure ESL's Experience Standards are thoughtfully adapted for residents living with cognitive change while maintaining alignment with ESL's overall resident experience and Wellness philosophy.
- Partner with Sales & Marketing to ensure ESL's Experience philosophy, standards, and differentiators are authentically represented throughout prospective resident interactions, tours, community storytelling, and brand positioning.
- Establish and manage strategic vendor and external partnership that enhance resident well-being, engagement, connection, choice, and overall experience.
- Promote shared accountability across functional and community leadership for delivering a cohesive and differentiated resident experience.
Requirements- Bachelor's degree in Hospitality, Gerontology, Human Services, Recreation, Business, or a related field required advanced degree preferred.
- Eight to ten or more years of progressive leadership experience in senior living, hospitality, resident experience, lifestyle, Wellness, or a related resident- or customer-experience environment.
- Multi-site regional, or corporate leadership experience with responsibility for developing and implementing Experience Standards, strategies, programs, or organizational initiatives across multiple locations.
- Demonstrated experience developing and executing scalable resident, customer, hospitality, lifestyle or experience strategies .
- Demonstrated understanding of holistic Wellness principles and the physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, and purposeful dimensions that contribute to quality of life and well-being.
- Proven ability to lead and influence geographically dispersed leaders and teams and drive accountability across multiple organizational levels.
- Strong understanding of aging, senior living operations, and the importance of adapting resident experiences to individual interests, preferences, abilities, routines, goals, and changing needs.
- Demonstrated success building leadership capability through coaching, education, performance expectations, talent development, and succession planning.
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively across Operations, Memory Care, Health & Wellness, Culinary, Sales & Marketing, and other functional disciplines to create an integrated resident experience.
- Demonstrated ability to use resident, family and organizational feedback, engagement and participation data, performance metrics, market insights and community observations to evaluate effectiveness and drive improvement.
- Experience evaluating and implementing technology, strategic partnerships, innovative programming , practices, and scalable solutions that enhance resident well-being and the overall resident experience.
- Strong strategic thinking, operational judgment, change-management, problem-solving, and decision-making capabilities.
- Exceptional leadership, communication, presentation, relationship-building, and executive communication and change-management skills.
- Ability to balance enterprise strategy and standardization with practical community-level execution and appropriate personalization.
- Proficiency with Proficiency with technology and the ability to effectively utilize company systems, resident engagement platforms, data, and reporting tools.
- Ability to Represent ESL's mission, values and experience standards and wellness philosophy in interactions with residents, families, team members, community and organizational leaders, partners, and external stakeholders.
- Ability to travel regularly across the Experience Senior Living portfolio based on organizational business and community needs
BenefitsWe offer a full benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, STD/LTD, life and voluntary life, 401k with employer matching, paid holidays, and up to 20 days PTO in the first three years.
Application Deadline: We anticipate reviewing applications through November 27th, 2026.
Compensation: $150,000 - $175,000 annual salary, 30% annual bonus target 
