David Barnes

I am very proud to be part of such a wonderful team. I have always lived by a simple principle that if you surround yourself with talented people and treat them well, great things will happen. Over years, great things have happened at Watermark Retirement Communities and continue to happen every day.

My career began with Fountains Retirement Communities in 1988 when I served as an operational trouble-shooter. Traveling to communities across the United States, typically living at the community and working with the Executive Director to implement our policies, procedures and systems, I could not have asked for a better primer in healthy aging. I met a resident who worked with Harry S. Truman and still spoke of him with fond enthusiasm, and another who, never having learned to swim, picked a date to swim with Bottle-nosed dolphins in Boscay Bay for her 98th birthday celebration. Another resident went sky diving as a remedy for a seriously debilitating muscular disease. Talk about expressing your Self!

In October of 2006, we changed our name from Fountains Retirement Communities of Arizona to Watermark Retirement Communities. As President of Watermark Retirement Communities I ensure that we have the right people, in the right place, doing the right thing: serving our associates, residents and clients. Over the years, we’ve developed state-of-the-art systems, and we’re proud of them. But it’s really our amazingly committed associates and residents that make Watermark communities such uncommon places. I continue to find inspiration in that every day.