Honoring Tim Gary

Changemakers 2024

By Natalie Mahn on Aug 9, 2024 in Senior Living

The 2024 Changemakers embody what it means to be an innovator. As sponsor of the Senior Housing News (SHN) series for the sixth year, we always enjoy seeing how each honoree spearheads change in unique, creative ways.  

With that, meet honoree Tim Gary — CEO of Galerie Living and an innovator with decades of experience in senior living. His SHN interview details how Galerie is bringing innovation to the table today (and how they’re planning for the future).

Read the interview with Changemaker Tim Gary

SHN: From where you are now and looking back at your career, how do you think you’ve changed as a leader?

Gary: Over the years I’ve become more confident in what I’m hearing from the customer and interpreting what the customer’s asking for and converting that into a product that they want or need. There’s this tough balance of understanding needs and wants in our industry, but gaining the confidence of listening to a customer and then being able to interpret that into the right product is very important.

SHN: With that emphasis on lifestyle in mind, do you want to talk about the reason behind you wanting to make those changes?

Gary: Initially, what I saw is that there’s a whole group of seniors out there who just don’t consider a senior living community. The reason we saw this was just that there weren’t enough lifestyle spaces built into the communities. This led to bad first impressions. First impressions are everything to us.

We weren’t paying attention to first impressions of seniors coming into a new lifestyle. First impressions aren’t just about pretty buildings. It’s also about active and energized spaces.

We build a beautiful product, but the beautiful product doesn’t get its full beauty until the people are in it. Once you get the people in it and you energize them with the right environment, you get smiles on their faces. That’s another component of what makes the lifestyle what it should be.

SHN: What are some changes that you believe should be brought to the industry in terms of DEI?

Gary: A lot of it starts in the interview process. I look at applicants’ personalities because I want people in roles that they’re happy in because then they stay in those roles.

You’ve got to spend more time training employees how to approach people, how to talk to people, how to ask people questions, how to interact with your co-workers. Those are just basic fundamentals that we don’t feel like we have enough time for, but if we don’t, it costs us culture, dollars, and the ability to grow.

Learn more from Changemaker Tim Gary

If you’d like to read more of Tim Gary’s insights, check out his full interview with SHN.

We encourage you to explore all the Changemakers’ interviews released to date, too!