On the Job: Chris Davis, VP of Strategic Services, RPM

Chris Davis has spent his career at the intersection of hospitality and operations. From global hotel brands like Hilton and IHG to lifestyle hospitality company New Waterloo, he built a foundation rooted in service, bringing that hospitality-first mindset into housing. 

Today, as VP of Strategic Services at RPM Living, Chris helps lead initiatives across resident experience, partnerships, growth, and operational innovation — applying lessons from the hotel world to the evolving expectations of multifamily residents. In this edition of On the Job, he shares how navigating different industries, embracing ambiguity, and building range across functions helped shape his path into leadership and reinforced the growing connection between hospitality and housing.

Read Chris’ interview below, and subscribe to The Brick for more conversations with housing leaders shaping the future of resident experience, operations, and hospitality in multifamily.

Getting in on the Ground Floor

How would you describe the path you took to get where you are today? What lateral moves, skill-building moments, or strategic pivots shaped your journey, and why? 

My career path has not been linear, but each move has added a different layer to how I operate today. I started in hospitality and spent more than a decade working across hotel operations, revenue management, and commercial strategy at both global hotel brands and startup environments. That foundation gave me a strong understanding of customer experience, while also teaching me how complex businesses operate behind the scenes.

The most important moves in my career were not always vertical. Moving across functions helped me build range: operations taught me urgency, revenue management taught me commercial discipline, startups taught me adaptability, and strategy roles taught me how to connect ideas to execution.

My move into real estate and multifamily was a strategic pivot, but not a complete departure. Many of the same questions carried over. How do you improve the customer experience? How do you scale ideas across a large operating environment? How do you balance innovation with operational discipline?

The Building Process

What was one of the most challenging professional setbacks you faced…one that may have felt bad in the moment but ultimately taught you a lasting lesson? What did you learn, and how did it change you?

Navigating the impact of COVID-19 on hospitality was one of the most challenging and formative periods of my career. Demand changed almost overnight. Teams became leaner. Every process had to be evaluated through a much more practical lens.

That period taught me how to identify inefficiency quickly, prioritize what mattered most, and create impact with fewer resources. It also expanded my strategic lens. I became much more aware of how operating models, team structures, and resource allocation can either create resilience or expose weakness.

The lasting lesson was that strategy cannot sit apart from execution. A good idea only matters if it can work within the realities of the business.

What was one of your biggest professional wins or breakout opportunities? What did it teach you, and how did it shape your trajectory?

One of my biggest breakout opportunities was being brought into RPM Living to build a new enterprise-level function from the ground up. Strategic Services did not exist before I joined, so the opportunity was not simply to step into a defined role. It was to help define what the function should become. That required identifying white space in the organization, creating structure around cross-functional work, and building a dedicated team that could create value across the business.

It taught me that some of the most meaningful opportunities come from ambiguity. Building the function from 0 to 1 shaped my trajectory by moving me from operating within established structures to creating new ones.

What You’re Building Today  

What does your role look like today? Walk us through what you oversee, the impact you aim to have, and how your day-to-day responsibilities reflect the skills you’ve built over time.

Today, my role sits at the intersection of growth, partnerships, resident experience, and operational innovation. My team helps evaluate and scale new programs, strengthen vendor and partner relationships, improve resident-facing experiences, and support internal teams with the infrastructure needed to operate more effectively.

The work is about connecting strategy to execution. That means taking ideas that are commercially compelling and making sure they are operationally realistic, valuable to residents, and sustainable for associates. In practice, that can mean launching new resident programs or evaluating partnerships that improve engagement, loyalty, and operating efficiency.

Leadership Structures

How would you describe your leadership style today, and how has it evolved throughout your career?

Earlier in my career, I was more focused on execution and getting to the right answer quickly. As my roles have become broader and more cross-functional, my leadership has evolved. Senior leadership requires more than speed. It requires alignment, judgment, communication, and the ability to help people make better decisions without creating unnecessary friction.

Today, my leadership style is direct, strategic, and supportive. I aim to give my team clear context, define the outcome, and create enough space for them to bring their own judgment to the work. I focus on developing a team that thinks critically, communicates clearly, and operates with ownership. I try to be candid without being careless, supportive without being vague, and clear without being overly prescriptive.

Blueprints for Future Operators

What advice would you give to rising operators in real estate who want to advance into senior roles?

Build range, not just expertise. Deep functional knowledge matters, but senior roles require a broader understanding of the business. As you grow, the work becomes less about executing clear instructions and more about defining the problem. You have to align stakeholders, make judgment calls with incomplete information, and understand how decisions affect the broader organization.

The strongest operators are translators. They understand the strategy and the financial model, but they also understand the customer experience, the associate experience, and the operational tradeoffs. Then they bring enough clarity to help the business move forward. That requires curiosity, communication, and comfort with ambiguity.