February 3, 2026
This article is part four of five of an interview conducted by Amber Busch with Dave Eskenazy.
Culture and Operational Excellence in Senior Housing
Executive Summary
Next, Dave underscores that meaningful progress in senior housing begins with culture; specifically, a blend of human focus, creativity, and disciplined execution. He emphasizes developing leaders who understand not only day‑to‑day operations but also the broader financial and ownership context behind them, believing that informed teams make better decisions and embrace change more confidently.
Dave’s approach is rooted in transparency. He champions a “cards‑face‑up” philosophy, encouraging proactive communication, honesty about challenges, and a no‑surprises relationship with partners and teams alike. This mindset, drawn from his hospitality background, reinforces trust as the essential currency of effective operations.
As the industry grows more complex, Dave stresses the importance of thoughtful leadership support, continuous learning, and a commitment to human-centered culture. His insights point to a clear conclusion: strong culture and trust, not scale alone, are the real drivers of resilience and long-term success in senior housing.
Why Culture Drives Success in Senior Housing
Amber Busch:
During a conversation we had a few years ago, you stressed the importance of culture to a successful organization. We’ve touched on it a bit here, but what is it about Cogir and the culture for team members that sets the company apart?
Dave Eskenazy:
At Cogir, our culture is built on three pillars: human focus, creativity, and excellence. It takes all three to succeed. This approach isn’t unique to Cogir; I’ve always wanted people at every company I’ve worked for to feel like they’re learning and growing.
For example, we make sure our executives, executive directors, and regional leaders understand what owners expect from us. I’ve had executive directors with decades of experience tell me they never really understood things like debt service coverage ratios or the financial pressures owners face. They’d wonder why owners seemed frustrated during budgeting, not realizing the “why” behind the numbers.
Our job is to perform for the owners, and poor financial performance isn’t an option. We have to be efficient and effective, but we also encourage creativity and trying new things. It’s okay to fail sometimes, as long as we keep moving forward. We can’t resist change; we have to keep advancing.
Ultimately, it’s about balance and embracing new ways of doing things while staying disciplined. And it’s about human focus: teaching our people, helping them understand the business, and creating an environment where they don’t just work in the company, but they truly understand and contribute to its success.
How Senior Living Operators Scale Without Losing Quality
Amber Busch:
I believe Cogir has grown quite a bit since you’ve been there, especially expanding into the U.S. market, correct? What do you see over the next decade for the company?
David Eskenazy:
Well, we kind of grew the old-fashioned way: we earned it. When I first started at Cogir, it was really just a consulting assignment for two days a week, and Cogir in Canada had quite a bit of multifamily and other kinds of real estate. They have roughly 55 communities in Canada in senior housing, and they had purchased 12 buildings in the U.S., and they wanted to build an operating company in the U.S. Perhaps some of the back-office stuff would still be done in Canada, but what would they do here, and what would they do there? And that was sort of the objective, but the growth was going to come through development. That was the plan, and when I went there, it was January of 2020. So, 60 days later we were in the middle of a pandemic, and Plan A was out the window.
We really pivoted almost from the get-go and took on more management agreements large enough to have a sizable enough revenue base to hire people and develop a more stabilized stand-alone plan for the U.S. Now today we’re about 120 communities in the U.S.; Canada is 200. I think we’re the second largest non-public operator in North America.
We’ve grown with our existing partners, and part of what happens is if you perform back to the excellence pillar, many of the owners in our industry own many communities in many markets, and they would look at that, and whether you like it or not, they do pit one operator against another. Oftentimes, owners will work with two, three, five, or a dozen different operators around the country. And if you keep performing, your phone will ring, either when they purchase some communities in your area or when one of the other operators is not doing as well. So, you’re either going to be a has or a has-not; there’s always two lists.
We’ve done a lot of work with Welltower. Welltower is a public company, so we can see what the performance is of their entire operation. And for me, even when I was at Merrill, we did that, and I would always look at those reports and say, “Well, they grew top-line revenue by 8%. Was our top-line revenue more or less than 8%?” We’re either accretive or dilutive to that number. I don’t want to be diluted to any number they put out there.
So, we need to be better than others in what we do. Which is what we’ve done, we have performed. Consequently, most of our growth has come from existing partners, more so even than new relationships. So, growing with your existing partners, they may sell three buildings, but they’re buying five other ones. So, developing those relationships based on credibility, performance, and trust.
We operate with our cards face up; if something’s not going well, we tell them. If something looks like it’s not going to go well the next couple months, we tell them in advance. We really try to operate on a no-surprises basis, and they don’t have to sleep with one eye open when we’re working for them. So, that’s a philosophy where we have to look somebody in the eye, and we have to perform.
But occasionally, we are human, and we are going to have our bumps and bruises. But when we do, just like with any one of your good employees, accidents will happen, mistakes will happen, but I know I’m still with the right person here. And that’s fundamentally what our basic key to growth is: that good things will happen. We don’t have to force growth. What we do need to do is be careful that we can still perform that way as the growth comes along.
So, we have to make sure we adapt and change the way we manage the organization—can we manage it the same with 200 communities as we did with 100? And part of that is making sure we’re not overloading our regionals (managers). Making sure our executive directors have the support they need. Our typical regional oversees fewer properties than most of the other operators. So, we end up having to have more of them, but we want to make sure they can go deep, not just wide, with their oversight and support of the local community-level management.
Building Trust and Transparency in Senior Housing Operations
Amber Busch:
A lot of what you’re saying is so interesting because it really speaks to your hospitality background. That’s what I love about senior housing—it’s at the intersection of real estate, hospitality, and healthcare. I remember you told me that early on when we first met. You said it’s more hospitality and real estate than anything else, and that stuck with me.
I also love what you said about operating with your cards face up. That’s such a hospitality mindset. It reminds me of something a client told me, “When you make a mistake, say you’re sorry, fix it, and move on.” I love that because it’s human. Like you said, we’re all human. We do our best, but we’re not perfect.
David Eskenazy
Yeah, it’s a little like “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” I mean, if you have an employee that works for you, and they’re cagey and you never know quite what’s going on. They’re not truthful with you, and you find things and you wonder, why didn’t they tell me that earlier? That always makes me nervous.
I don’t want us to be a management company like that. The owner-operator experience can’t be like that. It needs to be more like, if something’s going on, they’ll tell me. I don’t have to play 20 questions with them and worry that the 21st or 22nd question that I didn’t ask, I should have asked.
I don’t want to be like that. It’s got to be the opposite of that. There’s a trust and a credibility factor. This world is too complicated, and too many things go on. There are too many curveballs to not have that kind of relationship between the owner and the operator.
-End of Part 4 of interview-
Click here to read more about Amber’s interview with Dave Eskenazy.
© Clark Nuber PS, 2026. All rights reserved.
