Former telecom exec, naval officer leads organization’s data analytics charge.
By Jeff Shaw
Many professionals did a double take when Brian Jurutka was named president of the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC), the nonprofit organization that gathers and analyzes data for the seniors housing industry.
For one thing, co-founder, Bob Kramer, has already held the position — and he’s continuing to lead the organization as CEO. But even more notable was Jurut-ka’s history.
Jurutka served seven years as an officer on Navy submarines. He was plucked, not from seniors housing, but from comScore, a company measuring Internet marketing data and analytics.
His qualifications were undeniably impressive. But in an industry as tight-knit as seniors housing, how did an outsider end up in one of the most recognized positions?
Seniors Housing Business spoke with Jurutka to find out why he chose seniors housing — and why seniors housing chose him — to lead the new wave of data analytics in this sector.
Seniors Housing Business: You became NIC’s new president in early August. What about the NIC job appealed to you? How did you go about becoming a candidate?
Brian Jurutka: Honestly, it was an out-of-the-blue call I got from a recruiter. One of my initial responses was, “I want to make sure you’ve got the right guy.”
However, after learning more about NIC and going through the interview process, I understood why it was such a good fit. If you look at the macro trends and the overall demographics, it’s all moving in the right direction in seniors housing. Demographics are a key driver of demand.
As I learned more about the organization itself, it was very impressive to see how NIC has grown over the last 25 years. It’s pretty incredible the amount of time and effort the leadership puts in over here. As I went through all those pieces and learned about the analytics and data components, the position was a clear fit for my background.
At the end of the day, if you look at NIC’s position, it’s about helping people. Being able to go to work and do good is never a bad thing.
I lost both grandparents in the last year-and-a-half, and I was exposed to the industry through my parents’ experience. Having visited both my grandma and my grandpa, it was eye-opening. I was pretty impressed on several occasions when I had to interact with some of the proprietors. You’re dealing with some pretty good folks.
SHB: In your first few months, how has your position worked functionally alongside CEO Bob Kramer? Specifically, what functions do each of you perform in the NIC hierarchy?
Jurutka: Bob started the organization, grew it over 25 years and made it what it is today in so many ways. I’ll focus on the data and infrastructure side of the house.
There have been some very big changes over the last 25 years. One of the goals of NIC is to help the broader investment community understand seniors housing as an asset class. As a result, it is more and more recognized as an asset class. That success breeds more success.
We’re looking to expand the data set and expand what we do with the data we already have. I’m excited to do both.
If you hear Bob speak about NIC, there are three parts of the brand:
- The event component, where we help educate the community and provide opportunities for capital seekers to meet capital providers.
- The data piece, giving apples-to-apples comparisons.
- The analytics side — the “so what” associated with that data.
My focus is going to be on the data sets and the associated analytics to move those pieces forward. Initially I will be even more laser focused on the analytics side because that’s my comfort zone. There are certain skill sets and best practices I can implement on the data side.
Regarding the events, one of the huge components is not just putting on the event, but programming it. What are the big drivers of the industry? What are people interested in hearing and understanding? As I start building relationships and understanding those nuances, I’ll be able to provide help with that as well.
SHB: You mention best practices for analytics. What are some examples?
Jurutka: If you look at it organizationally, NIC started small. There’s still plenty of data to develop. So, we think about what this data looks like and what are the responsibilities of the various teams.
We maintain depth in the various roles and cross-training. This is so when we have surges in data — anytime you have a data product that lives on a quarterly basis, that data doesn’t come in as one data set every day — we make sure we have the resources to handle that data efficiently. But when we’re not handling those surges, we have other tasks for those people as well. We have folks cross-trained and able to take on the surges in data, as well as some of the other analyses.
We also want to take a look at the balance of how we think about the industry. There’s private pay, skilled nursing, memory care and so much more to consider. We are building data structures so that we can transform that data into a normalized data set.
You have thousands of properties, and they all use the data differently. We have to work with that to get the metrics that we want. We’ll continue to grow that capability so we can analyze across many properties.
Within the data sets that NIC handles, you can imagine each care segment — independent living, assisted living etc. — is one component. The competitive set someone might consider is not the same as someone else might consider. We conduct research where we are excluding entrance-fee CCRCs from the data, for example.
Making sure the analysts understand and appreciate these data issues is always at the forefront of our data collection and reporting. We have a lot of skill sets, but as we expand the markets, data sets, data products and insights, it requires a larger team that can continue to unlock and translate the nuances in the data. I’m learning alongside them.
Outlook for NIC
SHB: As president, what are your goals for the future of NIC? What positive changes would you like to see over the next two to three years?
Jurutka: We have a strong platform on the event side, and we’re going to expand that. On the data side, the initiatives include obtaining additional data sets, then communicating them to the market in a way that improves transparency and communication.
We’re going through a big initiative right now with operators, lenders and investors to ensure we find all the “gotchas” associated with data. When I think of a metric like occupancy, how hard can that be? You look at people in units, divide by the number of units, and you have occupancy.
Through these discussions, we start talking about physical occupancy versus economic occupancy, or other scenarios where you may change the denominator. The room that holds one bed now holds two, or you divide by beds instead of units. Is occupancy calculated across the month, or on any given day? We work diligently to communicate what those metrics are in a way that’s clear to the market as to what those data sets represent.
Among the great things that NIC does is present third-party measurements for apples-to-apples comparisons. And we’re also coming out with new metrics to make seniors housing more comparable to other property types like apartments.
SHB: What are some of the new metrics?
Jurutka: We are actively working on them. One of the big initiatives is “actual rents.” Currently, we provide an “asking rents” product, showing advertised market rates. The “actual rents” initiative is about getting the actual rents that are charged.
We’re targeting certain operators to participate because it’s a lot of time, energy and effort to get folks on board. As we head down this path right now, we’re working with operators to bring in their data sets so we can maximize effectiveness. Upon launch, we will expand it to include more.
One of the things about seniors housing is it’s incredibly fragmented. You have to be laser focused on what data sets you want to go after and from whom. You don’t want to spend years implementing data sets and still not have something meaningful in the market.
Because the industry is so fragmented, if you start with many of the smaller operators — and it’s important to eventually on-board them — you might spend a lot of time working on a product, but then have a product with many, many fewer properties as inputs.
Transferring skills and perspective
SHB: You come from a very different background than most people in the seniors housing industry — most recently a digital analytics firm, comScore. Tell me some more about what comScore does and how your experience will transfer to the seniors housing industry.
Jurutka: Although the industries were different, what occurs on a day-to-day basis is similar. (The focus of comScore is the independent third-party measurement of the digital space.) If you look at what NIC is doing, it’s independent third-party measurements of the market fundamentals. There are many parallels.
One of the interesting things I’ve discovered as I interact with operators and REITs is that a solid analytics background is vitally important. Having a good analytics skill set can serve you well across all industries.
SHB: What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of coming from another industry?
Jurutka: One of the clear advantages is bringing a different point of view. It’s the ability to very easily ask questions.
In my honeymoon period — I’m hoping it will last six months — I can ask any question I want without sounding stupid. I’m trying to use my first few months to meet as many people as I can and ask as many questions as I can to get a good grasp on the industry. I get the opportunity to bring what I learned in other industries to bear on what we do here at NIC.
The disadvantage is the time it takes to get up to speed. It’s just getting through that, which I personally find fascinating and exciting. You want to learn something every day, and I’m certainly drinking from the firehose right now.
SHB: From your relatively fresh perspective on the industry, what are the biggest strengths and biggest challenges facing the seniors housing industry?
Jurutka: I’m not sure if this is a strength or a challenge, but one of the big “aha moments” for me has been realizing the massive fragmentation of the industry. Once you get past the top 50 or 60 operators, the size drops off dramatically.
Also, while NIC has been collecting data and providing data on market fundamentals, we’ve just scratched the surface. Compared to many other industries, from a data perspective, seniors housing is in its infancy. There
are huge opportunities — not just for NIC, but also for the industry as a whole — to take advantage of data.
I can imagine a scenario where a data service — not likely NIC — could provide metrics to help you understand how caretakers physically move throughout a particular day. The implication that has is incredible. It affects what tasks they are tasked with.
Think of the heat maps, the paths through which someone conducts their day. If you can assign residents in a more efficient path, given metrics, there are opportunities there to find efficiency and better serve residents. In the data world, opportunities abound.
Over time, five years from now, it’s going to be much easier for NIC and the industry as a whole to get data than it is now. Data — the ability to take information and generate insights into the industry — is the new oil of the economy.
SHB: What about trends? Are you seeing anything interesting or unusual happening in seniors housing based on the data you’ve reviewed so far?
Jurutka: I learn something new every day. This sounds so naïve, but I’m still working through the importance put on cap rates. To me, understanding when the cap rate is more like a dependent variable than an independent variable is interesting. I would have thought one would calculate cap rate based on the NOI, rather than determining the value of a property based on cap rate. But I’ve come to terms with the fact that, yes, that’s how the industry works.
SHB: Your bachelor’s degree is in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, and you spent over seven years as an officer on a nuclear submarine. Can you tell us more about that time in your life, and how and why you transitioned over into data analytics? What lessons did you learn that are still applicable today?
Jurutka: I don’t know that I ever made a conscious decision to enter data analytics. I made the decision to join the submarine force because you work with some of the smartest folks in the navy — very high-caliber folks.
When I left the Navy for the civilian world, Capital One was looking for engineering types because it has a good way of looking at data. From an analytics perspective, Capital One was incredibly solid and gave me a questioning attitude regarding data — how to test and learn your hypotheses.
The next biggest takeaway was the leadership skills I learned working with the young sailors, as well as the decision-making process. You have to make decisions very deliberately.
SHB: You earned an MBA from Brenau University, which is based in Gainesville, Georgia. Where did that fit in on the timeline? Did you complete your MBA after finishing your military service? How did that degree help lead you into analytics and eventually to seniors housing?
Jurutka: There is a satellite campus on the naval base. They do an “on crew, off crew” system. When I was off crew, meaning onshore, I took college classes for my MBA.
The Navy does a really good job of teaching you what you need to know in the Navy, but not what you need to know when you leave. I knew I would need to understand business. You need an entirely new vocabulary and way of looking at the world. I said to myself, “I’m not going to be worried about a reactor plant manual when I’m interviewing.” I needed business acumen to go out in the world.