The Changing Leaders of Private Clubs

The private club world is navigating a generational transition unlike anything it's seen before — and it's happening on two fronts at once. Members are getting younger, and their expectations are fundamentally different from the generations before them. They're not joining for status. They're joining for experiences, community, and a lifestyle that fits who they are. At the same time, the people running clubs are changing too — and that part of the story doesn't get nearly enough attention. Dr. Rod Warnick has spent more than 40 years at the University of Massachusetts Amherst studying hospitality trends and training the next generation of private club leaders. What he's seeing in his classroom right now is remarkable: finance students, technology professionals, operations managers, and communications specialists who are choosing club management over Wall Street and corporate careers — and bringing a level of business sophistication to the field that the industry has never seen before. In this conversation, Dr. Warnick shares what the data and his decades of experience tell him about where clubs are headed, why the lifestyle shift is reshaping what membership means, how the next generation of GMs is being trained to lead boards and build community, and why — despite all the uncertainty — he's genuinely optimistic about the future of private clubs. If you lead a club, sit on a board, or are simply paying attention to where this industry is going, this is a conversation you'll want to hear.