Creating and Curating a Lifestyle

When a new resident moved to Towne Lake in Cypress, Texas, and wandered into a community event, lifestyle director Mackenzie Strickland took the single woman under her wing.

Strickland introduced her to other residents and eventually the newcomer found her tribe, joining a resident-led Bunco group and within six months hosting monthly events herself. She also met a man and had their wedding at Towne Lake, which Strickland helped plan.

“She was so thankful that we had embraced her when she’d first arrived,” Strickland says.

That’s the kind of feel-good story community lifestyle directors strive for, and one reason why Stickland was a finalist for that role in the 2026 National Sales & Marketing Awards (The Nationals). A modicum of event planner, a dash camp counselor, a wedge of welcome wagon, and a pinch of therapist, the role of lifestyle director is that of a social architect helping to put “community” into new communities.

Engagement With Intention

Building a sense of belonging is the core philosophy among lifestyle directors. They pay close attention to residents, often meeting and getting to know them during an onboarding process on move-in day and monthly orientation meetings.

And when it comes to event planning, “Attendance is awesome, but engagement is better,” says Amanda Travers, named Lifestyle Director of the Year in 2026 for her work at Cadence Century Farm, a 55+ community in Meridian, Id., “It can be especially critical among the active adult cohort, as residents are often far from their established social networks.”

Creating engagement relies on being intentional. It’s one thing to throw a party every week, but quite another to build a culture of connection among residents. Lifestyle directors should be on site, meeting with residents before, during, and after events, says Dana Lamoureux, the lifestyle director at Wolf Ranch, a Hillwood Community in Georgetown, Texas, another Nationals finalist.

Lamoureux spends time encouraging residents to interact across a variety of activities she’s established, particularly people at the same stage of life. For a Mother’s Day brunch, for instance, she’ll have name tags for each attendee with information that lets people know who’s a newbie, who’s got more than one child, who’s got kids in sports.

“It’s a way to start conversations,” she says.

Engagement can be a particularly difficult task in a multi-generational community where the needs of residents span all ages and stages.

Latham Liggett, a senior lifestyle director with OnPlace Collective serving the Sunterra community in Katy, Texas, also a Nationals finalist, takes a layered approach. The morning is reserved for family events the afternoons for multi-generational activities, and nights for a “Wine Down” that allows the 55-plus cohort to “Hang out and watch the sun go down,” he says.

Fresh Starts

A newer community, not fully built out, changes event planning dynamics for a lifestyle director. Many of the amenities might not be fully developed and only a fraction of the homes are occupied, so events need to be right-sized for what will most likely be fewer participants.

“At first, lifestyle directors are activators, just getting people active while amenities are being built,” Liggett says. “As a community expands you get into the phase we’re you’re really creating community through events and helping people make connections.”

When Lamoureux started at Wolf Ranch in 2020, there were only 500 households living in the community. Not only was the place just finding its legs, but it was also the during the pandemic, which put limits on what she could do.

“They hired me to connect with people during a time when people needed it the most,” Lamoureux says. In addition to organizing online activities, such as classes in mixology, painting, planting succulents, bingo, and story time for kids, "The developer opened trails so we could do everything safely.” 

While smaller, more intimate events are a necessity when a community is just starting out, Strickland has found that even when she might arrange an event for a thousand or more people, creating smaller cohorts within a larger event helps build connection.

Towne Lake is nearly built out with only about 60 lots left in a community of just under 3,800 homes. Strickland says it’s important to personalize things and connect people who are “like minded or who are at the same season in life.”

She also stresses the importance of getting out and not just being behind the scenes.

Lifestyle directors should be “Front-facing, walking up to people and interacting with each one of them,” she says.

Rebrand and Refresh

As the years go by, communities turn over. Wolf Ranch now has 1,600 homes; the complete build out of about 2,600 homes will be completed in three to five years.

In that time, Lamoureux has seen the demographics shift from 55-plus residents to younger families, challenging her and other lifestyle directors to be nimble and adaptable and cater to longer-term residents and newer ones by coming up with fresh ideas and updating stalwarts.

On a cruise attending a game show activity, she was busily scrawling notes knowing her residents back in Texas would like some similar. “It’s important to rebrand and refresh, sprinkle in new things for long-time residents,” she says.

Emma Ngati, lifestyle manager at Westerly in Erie, Colo., near Boulder, says she gets ideas from residents, many of whom stop by to visit her at the community’s amenity center.

“I also love to look at what other established communities are doing,” says Ngati, also a Nationals finalist. She points to Southern Land company’s flagship community in Nashville where Westerly’s developer has a team creating specific events and programming for active adults, and other teams creating programming for other areas of the community. 

Early and Often

Strickland points out the importance of bringing in a lifestyle director early in the community creation process.

“Sometimes developers and builders are product-focused in the moment. They can forget the after part, who is going to be there afterwards,” she says. “Lifestyle should be an important part of the design.”  

Even when a lifestyle director is there from the beginning, the learning curve can be steep when there are so many uncertain variables, from personalities to vendors to weather.

Ngati learned the hard way about the importance of having multiple backup plans the day of an event, especially those held outdoors.

Case in point: During setup for the first outdoor public concert she scheduled for Westerly’s village green, an ominous cloud rolled it.

“All the weather apps said it wasn’t going to rain so we set up. But then a windstorm came and blew away our 10-foot E-Z Up tents. They just tumbled away,” she says.

Now, for every concert she reserves a professional-grade tent that’s weighed down with cinder blocks, she follows the mantra to "plan for the worst, hope for the best and expect something in between,” she says.

While fail forwards like this can lead to future success, the ultimate successes for a lifestyle director are in the connections made among the residents.

Says Lamoureux, “You want to create a culture where neighbors call this place home and have their forever friends. It’ fun to play a part in the residents’ stories.”