Editor’s Note: The McKnight’s Long-Term Care News Daily Update and McKnight’s Senior Living Daily Briefing e-newsletters are profiling each of the McKnight’s 2019 Women of Distinction in July. For more coverage, visit the McKnight’s Long-Term Care News and McKnight’s Senior Living websites and read the July print edition of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News and August print edition of McKnight’s Senior Living.
It was at Shamim Wu’s first job as the admissions director at Royal Care Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center that she developed a passion for serving seniors and their families.
Soon after, she accepted an opportunity with Summerville Senior Living, where she supported two Los Angeles-area communities as the director of community relations. She quickly proved her skills and was promoted to sales specialist and then senior regional director of sales.
In 2010, she moved to Holiday Retirement as a district vice president of sales, and she later assuming the role of executive vice president of sales. She was responsible for more than 600 employees and annual revenues of more than $1 billion. During her time at Holiday, overall occupancy rates increased from 73% to 92%.
From there, in 2016, Wu stepped into a new position as president and COO at Silverado, where she spent almost a year before settling into her current job as COO at Eclipse Senior Living. She now supports the operations of more than 100 senior living communities across the country.
In 2017, Wu was part of a Holiday Retirement team that received the Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operation Research and the Management Sciences from INFORMS, an international association for operations research and analytics professionals. The award recognized Holiday’s work with revenue management firm Prorize to develop what it calls the Senior Living Rent Optimizer system to help the organization consistently realize a 10% revenue increase from new leases.
Wu also is a board member on the Texas Assisted Living Association and a member of the California Assisted Living Association.
She graduated from California State Polytechnic University, where she met her husband, Jordan Wu. The two fund annual recognition scholarships and an endowed scholarship that is awarded to a member of any California chapter. The scholarship fund allows her the opportunity to provide opportunities for more women. The couple also has two young daughters, Leila and Alina.
McKnight’s Women of Distinction is a joint program of McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.
The McKnight’s Women of Distinction program’s exclusive Platinum sponsor is PointClickCare.
