Editor’s Note: We are profiling the McKnight’s 2020 Women of Distinction honorees daily through the program’s July 28 online awards ceremony. To register or learn more about this digital celebration, the Forum the next day (which offers three free continuing education credits July 29) and the program in general, visit this website.
Over the past two decades, Beth Burnham Mace’s work has helped turn the senior housing and care sector into a mainstream institutional investment asset class by increasing transparency to a wide range of investors and capital providers. This transparency, in turn, has contributed to a lower cost of capital for operators and more housing and care options for older adults.
As the chief economist and director of outreach at the National Investment Center for the Seniors Housing & Care Industry — she was the senior living and care industry’s first chief economist — she and her staff of four interpret and disseminate NIC data to help operators and others obtain a complete view of the state of the industry.
Mace joined NIC full time in 2013 but before that had been active as a volunteer member of the NIC Board of Directors for seven years, and she also chaired NIC’s Research Committee. In 2004, she helped establish the NIC MAP Data Service, which now regularly reports market fundamentals for 140 metropolitan markets across the country. In 2008, she helped form a strategic alliance with Real Capital Analytics to regularly report property transactions and pricing metrics. And in 2013, she began writing biannual reports on the investment performance and returns for senior housing for the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries.
Last year, Mace was the project manager for seminal NIC-funded “Forgotten Middle” study, which found that 54% of the 14.4 million middle-income older adults in 2029 in the United States will lack the financial resources to pay for senior housing and care, and a combination of public and private efforts will be needed to address the looming crisis. The resulting manuscript, published in Health Affairs, was the journal’s fifth-most read article in 2019.
Before NIC, Mace was a director at AEW Capital Management and worked in the AEW Research Group for 17 years. During that time, she helped underwrite some of the industry’s first institutionally funded private equity senior housing investments.
Before joining AEW, Mace spent 10 years at DRI/McGraw-Hill as director of the regional information service and three years as a regional economist at the Crocker Bank in San Francisco. She also previously worked at the National Commission on Air Quality, the Brookings Institution and Boston Edison.
Outside of work, Mace has a passion for labyrinths. She co-founded and established the not-for-profit Labyrinth Guild of New England in 2001, becoming president in 2006. The organization provides a meditative environment for reflection and introspection. Over the years, Mace has led myriad labyrinth workshops at schools, hospitals, churches and prisons and has led and facilitated groups at the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth in France.
The McKnight’s Women of Distinction program is jointly administered by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News and McKnight’s Senior Living. The program’s Diamond sponsor is PointClickCare. Silver sponsors are OnShift and PharMerica, and the Signature sponsors are Acadia Pharmaceuticals and Enquire.
