Senior Living Hall of Fame 2020 Inductees

The American Seniors Housing Association (ASHA) announces the Senior Living Hall of Fame’s 2019 class of inductees who will be inaugurated during the association’s 2020 annual meeting in Palm Desert, CA on January 23rd.
The following inductees will be honored:

• Lynne Katzmann, Ph.D., Juniper Communities
• Alice and Emmett Koelsch, Koelsch Communities
• Margaret Wylde, Ph.D., ProMatura Group

The Senior Living Hall of Fame recognizes the visionaries who have distinguished themselves through uncommon foresight and ground-breaking innovation. These are industry leaders with an unwavering commitment to community lifestyles that enhance choice, independence, dignity and personalized service.

Lynne Katzmann, Ph.D.

• Founded senior living organization guided by the principles of corporate social entrepreneurship
• Pioneered integrated care model to participate in capitated and risk-based reimbursement

Lynne Katzmann founded Juniper Communities, which invests in, develops and operates senior living and long-term care communities at the age of thirty-two. Bringing with her no financial backing, a mere six year’s business experience and a PhD in economics, her mission was to improve the last years of life for seniors.

Katzmann believed that a woman could and should lead this business where the customers—staff, residents and family caregivers—were predominantly women. Her goal was to make Juniper profitable for investors; and as a founder of the then nascent corporate social entrepreneurship movement, she would adhere to the double bottom line: doing well by doing good.

Today, 31 years later, CEO Katzmann continues to actively lead Juniper, now with 22 properties in three states. Juniper is ranked #12 by Crain’s New York on its annual Top 50 ranking of woman-owned companies for the New York tri-state area.

Juniper’s investors have enjoyed double digit annual returns while her residents, their families and Juniper Associates give the company high marks on annual customer satisfaction studies. Health-related metrics, such as low hospital readmissions, support Juniper achievements with hard data indicators.

Juniper has developed and now shared a pioneering model of integrated care that will better position Juniper and other senior living operators to participate in capitated and risk-based reimbursement. Called Connect4Life, the program integrates with other services using a “high-tech/high-touch” communications protocol that transfers information through an electronic health record (EHR) and coordinates care through a human navigator.

Lynne is now launching an operator-sponsored Medicare Advantage I-SNP, collaborating with Christian Living Communities, Englewood, CO, and Ohio Living, Columbus, OH. Under The Perennial Consortium banner, the group plans to go live with the network in 2021 and to expand via partnerships with additional operator stakeholders.

Alice and Emmett Koelsch

• Opened the Delaware Plaza in 1971, one of the first communities in the nation to provide “assisted living”
• Laid the groundwork for three family-owned and operated senior living organizations: Koelsch Communities, Jerry Erwin Associates and Weatherly Inns, totaling over 100 communities nation-wide

Emmett and Alice Koelsch risked it all on a shuttered nursing home in 1958. Guided by their family values and deeply held faith, they became innovators and leaders in the seniors housing industry.

The Koelsch family story is one of classic American success. Emmett Koelsch started his life on a farm in Great Bend, KS, and moved to Longview, WA at 17-years-old where he worked various jobs as a milkman, construction worker, and horse logger.

He met Alice at the St. Helen’s Inn, where she was waiting tables. They both started at Reynolds Metals, where Emmett was employed before and after his service during World War II. After 21 years and rising to a management position, Emmett left Reynolds Metals to pursue a new business: Seniors housing.

Emmett and Alice Koelsch started their family business in 1958 with the acquisition of a nursing home in Kelso, WA that had 52 beds, all of them empty. They moved themselves and their five children into the basement of the nursing home and got to work, buying or building every nursing home in Cowlitz County over the next 10 years.

In 1971, the couple had an idea: Provide care for those who could not live alone but did not require skilled nursing services. They built the Delaware Plaza in Longview, WA, providing meals, housekeeping and medication management for their residents, 10 years before the term “assisted living” was coined.

Emmett and Alice built a highly respected senior living business over the next 25 years. When they retired, all five of their children followed in their footsteps, starting their own seniors housing businesses with the foundation that Emmett and Alice laid. These businesses now operate over 100 communities in 21 states. The Koelsch children have never lost the values instilled by Emmett and Alice: Courtesy, integrity and treating everyone with dignity and respect.

Margaret Wylde, Ph.D.

• Founded ProMatura Group in 1984, specializing in 55+ age-qualified research, planning and programming
• Author of numerous research studies examining
customer attributes and preferences

Dr. Margaret Wylde started ProMatura Group in 1984 and since that time has conducted an extensive body of research that has significantly improved the collective understanding of the 55+ market.

The numerous and noteworthy research studies she has led include: Prospective Independent Living Customers: Key Findings from a Study of Prospects and Hold Outs (2013); Unlocking the Mystery Behind Very Satisfied Customers: Make Them Feel at Home (2014); Senior Living Technology Report (2017); and People, Place, Programming: Quality of Life in Assisted Living (2019).

In addition, Dr. Wylde has had a significant impact on community planning research that defines lifestyles, residences, amenities, services, payment plans, and pricing across North America, Europe and Australia.

ProMatura’s age-qualified housing expertise spans empty nester (55+) housing, as well as independent living, assisted living, care for those with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia, continuing care retirement communities, and nursing care.

ProMatura has collected data since 2003 for use by investors and developers of age-qualified, service-enriched housing and provides this to the National Investment Center for the Seniors Housing & Care Industry (NIC), which uses the data to track key market trends quarterly.