We continue our "5 Questions With" series, featuring the impressive list of industry leaders on Sage's 2026 Client Advisory Board.
Next up is Beverly Janco Tuttle, Chief Executive Officer at Navion Senior Living.
1. What first got you into the senior care space?
My connection to senior care is deeply personal. My mother is a 90-year-old retired RN who worked in senior living full time until she was 84. When I was just ten years old, she brought me to spend my summers at the nursing home where she served as Director of Nursing. What she may have seen as a creative solution to summer childcare turned out to be one of the most formative experiences of my life. I rotated through departments, I watched, I listened—and I witnessed my mom pour herself into caring for people in the most vulnerable season of their lives. I fell in love with the elderly. That love has never left me, and it's the lens through which I see every challenge and every opportunity in this industry.
2. What do you see as the biggest challenges in the industry today?
Acuity is rising in ways that are fundamentally reshaping what we do. Residents are arriving later, older, and more medically complex — managing multiple chronic conditions in environments that were originally designed to serve a social model.
Layered on top of that is a workforce in crisis. It isn't simply a numbers problem. The people showing up every day are stretched thin, carrying heavier loads, and often under-resourced for the acuity they're navigating on the floor. When caregivers are overwhelmed, the smallest things get missed—and in senior housing, the smallest things carry the greatest weight.
And then there is the evolution of expectation. Today's families want proactive communication, real-time awareness, and genuine transparency. That is not an unreasonable ask—it is the right ask. But meeting it requires a level of operational visibility and coordinated intention that most communities are still working hard to build.
What connects all of these challenges is this: we are making consequential decisions, every hour of every day, under pressure, with over-burdened teams. That is the true operating condition of senior housing today. And for those of us who have loved this population since childhood, the urgency to get it right has never felt more personal.
3. What’s the biggest leadership lesson you’ve learned and would want to share?
Three decades in this industry have taught me many things, but if I could distill leadership down to its most essential elements, it would come back to two words every time: transparency and communication.
Early in my career, I think I believed—as many leaders do—that carrying the weight of difficult information was part of the job. That protecting your team from complexity or uncertainty was a form of strength. I've learned the opposite is true. People don't need to be shielded from reality. They need to be trusted with it.
4. What do you think the industry needs to do better over the next decade?
After thirty years in this industry, I believe we are standing at an inflection point—and what we choose to do in the next decade will define senior housing for a generation.
We must change our relationship with technology… not as a novelty, but as a genuine extension of care. The tools exist today to move us from reactive to proactive, to know before a fall happens rather than respond after. This is no longer optional infrastructure. It is a care delivery imperative. But technology means nothing without the people to bring it to life. We must invest in our workforce with the same intentionality we invest in our buildings.
We must also be more courageous in reshaping the narrative around aging. For too long this industry has been defined by what it prevents rather than what it enables. Senior living should be seen as a place of purpose, connection, and dignity—not a last resort, but a deliberate choice.
The baby boomer generation is arriving, expectations are rising, and the margin for complacency has never been thinner. The industry that meets this moment with boldness will look very different, and very much better.
5. What gives you the most optimism about the future of senior care?
What gives me the most optimism is that the people entering this industry today are choosing it with intention.
For decades, senior care was seen as a fallback—a sector you landed in rather than pursued. That is changing. I am meeting young leaders and clinicians drawn to this work because they understand what is at stake. That shift changes everything.
Technology is also delivering on its promise—not someday, but now. Predictive tools that intervene before a health event, real-time information for caregivers, and transparency for families. We are just at the beginning of what that looks like at scale.
And the need has never been greater. With both parties in most households working full time, families simply cannot provide the care aging parents deserve at home the way they once could. Senior housing has become an essential resource, and that recognition is driving demand and long-overdue investment in our industry.
I have loved this population since I was ten years old, walking down the halls of my mother's nursing home. The fact that this industry is finally receiving the attention, investment, and talent it has always deserved—that, to me, is everything.
