By Matt Valley

Richard Hutchinson

The past year has been a momentous one for Richard Hutchinson and Discovery Senior Living, the largest privately held seniors housing operator in the United States.

In February, Hutchinson was elected chair of the American Seniors Housing Association (ASHA) for the 2026-2027 term. Meanwhile, the Bonita Springs, Florida-based company that he co-founded more than 30 years ago — and currently leads as CEO — has experienced rapid growth by shifting its strategy toward a highly scalable regional management model.

Discovery has expanded its operations through major management agreements with institutional real estate partners such as Welltower, Diversified Healthcare Trust (DHT) and Ventas, all publicly traded real estate investment trusts.

In June 2025, Welltower acquired NorthStar Healthcare, along with its portfolio of 40 senior living communities, retaining Provincial Senior Living (a Discovery management company) as manager for 33 communities throughout the country.

In August 2025, Ventas selected Discovery to assume the operations of 15 senior living communities across multiple states. The properties have been integrated into three of Discovery’s nine management companies, including Integral Senior Living, Discovery Management Group and TerraBella Senior Living.

In October 2025, Discovery entered into multiple management agreements with DHT to operate a 42-community, multi-state senior living portfolio. In similar fashion, the 42 communities are distributed across several of Discovery’s management companies to maximize local market insight while maintaining national support infrastructure.

As a result of this flurry of activity, Discovery now manages approximately 420 communities with nearly 47,000 units across 40 states. That’s a healthy increase from June 1, 2025, when
Discovery’s management portfolio included 362 properties and 39,236 units, according to the ASHA 50, an annual ranking of the 50 largest U.S. seniors housing owners and operators.

Discovery currently ranks No. 2 on the operator list, second only to Brookdale Senior Living. Hutchinson oversees a workforce of almost 25,000 employees.

In his new role as ASHA chair, Hutchinson succeeds Kathy Sweeney of Blue Moon Capital Partners. He works alongside ASHA’s executive committee to guide the association’s priorities. Key areas of focus include workforce development, improving the resident experience, advancing innovation across disciplines, and fostering a greater understanding of the value senior living provides to older adults and their families.

Hutchinson’s military background has shaped his leadership style. He served in the U.S. Army from 1986 to 1994, including a tour in Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War. He likes to use military terms to describe select seniors housing operations. For example, he refers to the business assimilation team at Discovery as a “special ops” team because of its disciplined approach to integrating new communities into the company’s portfolio.

Seniors Housing Business spoke with the longtime executive about his career path, the reasons behind Discovery’s rapid growth, and what he hopes to accomplish as ASHA chair.

From Small-Town Maine to the Military

Seniors Housing Business: You grew up in rural Maine. Where exactly? What ultimately led you to serve in the military?

Richard Hutchinson: It’s a little town in Maine called Pittston (population 2,875 as of the 2020 census), and it’s located near the capital of Augusta. If I were to tell you that it was one of those one-stoplight towns, I’d be off by one stoplight. We had hundreds of people in our town. It was a great upbringing. Pittston offered all the things you think of in a small rural town in Maine.

Regarding military service, there were not a lot of [job] opportunities in that area of Maine. We were a poor family, so college was not something we could pay for. It was a situation where I could either go to work in one of the mills, such as Bath Iron Works (a large shipyard about 30 miles south of Augusta), or go into the military. I decided that I wanted to get out of Maine, as a lot of young people do. Then, as you get older, you want to go back to Maine. But as a young person, I wanted to experience the world.

I ended up joining the military and earning my degree while I was in the military. That was the first step in the long journey to where I am today. (Hutchinson graduated with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Saint Leo College, now Saint Leo University, in Florida and eventually became a certified public accountant.)

SHB: What aspects of your military training have you applied to your seniors housing career?

Hutchinson: Discipline and execution are part of it, but what I apply most is the ability to operate in a very dynamic environment where you need to make nimble decisions. Like they say, upon first contact with the enemy, the battle plan goes out the window. It almost feels like that every day in seniors housing.

From the standpoint of running an organization, it’s important to have that nimbleness and actionable intel, but you don’t want to require so much intel that decision-making stalls. We have that 80 percent rule in the military. Give me 80 percent of the information, and I’ll make a decision. We can’t wait to have 100 percent perfect information to move forward.

On the leadership side, the military’s most influential lesson for me began in basic training: You’re put into a situation where you must coalesce a team from all walks of life and get everyone to rally around a single mission.

One fallacy about the military is how rigid the leadership is. It’s actually the opposite. The army defines leadership as the art of influencing others to accomplish a mission, and it really is as much an art as a science. It’s not just about policy and procedure.

It’s about being able to understand the individual you’re sitting across from, identifying what motivates him, and then using that knowledge as a leader to get him aligned on the mission alongside others who have different motivations.

The Genesis of Discovery Senior Living

SHB: You departed the military in 1994. What was the next step in your career?

Hutchinson: I had a small stint with a timeshare developer for less than a year, and then I got recruited into a company called Florida Design Communities developing master-planned communities. In 1995, we ended up buying out a company called Westinghouse Communities Inc., which was part of the Westinghouse Electric Corp. family. We bought their real estate holdings. (The newly combined entity was renamed WCI Communities.)

We developed large master-planned communities that were highly amenitized, upper-end type projects, mostly located in Florida. Initially, we did a lot of high-rise development along the coastlines.

At the exact same time, fewer than six months after I joined the company, we started constructing Aston Gardens at The Courtyards in Sun City Center, Florida. Discovery still operates that community today. I had a dual job back then. I was doing mostly the master-planned community development activities. I quickly became very focused on the senior living portion of the business.

(WCI Communities spun off its seniors housing development and management operations into a company called Aston Care Systems in 1994. Discovery Senior Living was built upon the foundations of Aston Care Systems, which originally planned and developed the flagship Aston Gardens communities in the late 1990s and early 2000s.)

SHB: When you came out of the service in 1994, you could have gone into any number of industries. Why did you choose real estate construction and development?

Hutchinson: It was about the only thing I was familiar with. Because I entered the military right out of high school, I wasn’t exposed to much. During my upbringing, my dad often helped build homes. In Maine, you get your family and friends together to build you...

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