Trustwell Living Names New Ceo With Focus On Strengthening Operations, Culture

Lori Colwell Jones is the new CEO of senior living operator Trustwell Living.

On Wednesday, the New York City-based company announced that Colwell Jones has succeeded former Trustwell CEO and co-founder Larry Cohen in the top leadership role. Cohen is moving to the chairman role with the new leadership appointment, where he will oversee the operator’s growth opportunities.

Colwell Jones arrives at Trustwell having previously worked as COO and chief clinical officer at 12 Oaks Senior Living. She plans to use her 35 years of experience in the industry to help stabilize and strengthen the company’s operations and bolster its employee culture.

She also joins the senior living operator just after it experienced a period of rapid growth. In the last five years since the company’s founding, it has grown to manage 41 communities across the U.S., with occupancy growing in 2026. Now that it has a base of communities numbering in the dozens, Trustwell is turning its collective eye inward.

As Trustwell’s new CEO, Colwell Jones is analyzing and evaluating the company’s structure and leadership with a goal of getting “ready to execute” on operational improvements.

“We need to make sure that we’ve got the clinically sound communities and the financial discipline, and that we have that consistency in operations,” she told Senior Housing News.

For Colwell Jones, that is a process that starts with culture, leadership growth and trust of leadership. A cornerstone of that effort is asking staff at the community level what “keeps them up at night” and figuring out ways to support them in light of their worries.

“You want to help people feel valued and appreciated, and make sure that the work that we’re doing matters,” she said.

She added: “It’s getting out into the communities, meeting the team and spending time alongside them, listening a lot and helping them work through things. Trust takes time.”

Building and maintaining bench strength is a general challenge in senior living given the constant churn of turnover, and it’s a big focus for Trustwell’s new CEO. The company is building out its leadership teams, both in communities and at the corporate level, to increase its staffing depth. The company has recently hired operations specialists and deepened its sales bench in an effort to do so. Trustwell also has hired clinical specialists to specifically aid struggling communities and improve the bandwidth of regional directors.

At the center of these efforts is a belief that operators like Trustwell must help attract people who have passion for senior living and for serving others.

“We’ve got to make sure that we’ve got people who want to be there,” she said.

She is taking a bottom-up approach by developing individualized action plans for employees at the community and regional levels with a focus on the things that drive a community’s profitability and success, including hiring staff, filling vacant units, setting rates and improving processes.

She is, along with these efforts, seeking to “standardize, stabilize and strengthen” the company’s operations with more margin discipline, more efficient labor spending and occupancy growth. That includes using data to make sure residents are in the right care level and adjusting accordingly.

Powering these efforts is a growing data science and analytics operation. Last year, Cohen detailed how the operator built a data science operation that rivals what even REITs are capable of.

In 2026, Trustwell has more than a dozen different tech and IT initiatives ongoing, including building a new company intranet, transitioning to a new customer relationship management (CRM) system, modernizing its nurse call system and implementing more resident-facing tech solutions relating to dining, entertainment and engagement. All the while, the company’s leaders are using dashboards to track an ever-growing slate of data.

While Trustwell has had a few growth spurts over the last few years, growth is not currently top of mind for Colwell Jones. That’s not to say the company wouldn’t say yes to the right opportunity, but that “we don’t want to just chase deals for the sake of scale,” she said.

“The goal that I have is that it will be intentional, and that we will be respected as we do it, because … we’re seeking excellence,” she said.

The post Trustwell Living Names New CEO With Focus on Strengthening Operations, Culture appeared first on Senior Housing News.