Camden CIO and RETTC Steering Committee chair reflects on Camden’s culture of reinvention to a sharper, more disciplined vision for AI and multifamily operations

At Forum 2026, Kristy Simonette, Senior Vice President – Strategic Services and Chief Information Officer, at Camden Property Trust (a publicly traded REIT, No. 16 NMHC Top Owner, 32 NMHC Manager, with 58,000 units), sat down with Tyler Christiansen, CEO, Funnel for a conversation on AI, Camden’s history and track record for innovation, and lessons learned four years into Work Reimagined. 

Camden’s approach to reinvention is not theoretical. During the Great Financial Crisis the company launched its contact center instead of retreating into the old model and trying to wait out the storm. And again, in the midst of COVID, Camden completely shifted their operating model through Work Reimagined. 

Simonette has helped drive many of Camden’s operational shifts, and that same discipline shapes how she evaluates AI: it must solve a real problem and prove its value.

What counts as valuable AI now

In a world of AI-hype, Simonette’s standard for what matters now came directly out of everything that came before.

“It has to move the needle.” —Kristy Simonette, Senior Vice President – Strategic Services and Chief Information Officer, at Camden Property Trust

In a market with flat rents, high concessions, and tighter pressure on expenses, solutions must add measurable value.

For her, that means technology has to “either make us work more efficiently, save us money, or increase our revenues.” Otherwise, it does not belong.

That urgency is shaped by where Camden already is operationally. “As far as humans on site, I think we’re as low as we can go,” she said. Camden has already centralized significant work through Work Reimagined including centralizing the assistant community manager responsibilities and parts of the leasing journey. The next phase is about finding real leverage in technology without turning the business into a junk drawer of disconnected tools.

That is why Simonette was so blunt about the current state of vendor sprawl. “There are so many point solutions out there,” she said. Her answer was equally clear: “The AI components that are going to revolutionize the way that we do business are embedded in your system [Funnel]. It’s the only way that makes sense.”

That is a sharper and more sophisticated argument than a generic pro-AI stance. Simonette is arguing that the next wave of value will come from AI embedded inside the workflows of systems operators already use to run the business, not from endlessly layering on solutions that fracture data, and AI limits impact.

Voice AI only mattered because it produced real results

Simonette’s example of that philosophy in practice was voice AI. When Christiansen asked how she decides what deserves full-speed deployment versus what remains a pilot, she answered with business impact, not novelty. “My goal is to reduce our average speed to answer, our hold times, and improve our customer experience,” she said. That was the lens she brought into the rollout.

“We reduced hold times by 44%.” This is not a nice to have. This is a “needle mover.”

“We reduced hold times by 44%.” This is not a nice to have. This is a “needle mover.”—Kristy Simonette

“Now that’s a coup if you are in the customer service business and you run a contact center,” she said. “That is unheard of.” Just as important, she tied the operational gain to the renter experience. “Our customer sentiment right now is the highest it’s ever been,” she said. “That’s a testament to the systems that we have in place to facilitate a better customer experience.”

Camden didn’t arrive at this view by accident. Why their AI lens carries weight

Simonette’s view was built through years of operational reinvention, where the company learned to start with the real breakdown, solve the right problem, and prove the value before scaling anything.

The crisis-era decision that changed Camden’s model

One of the clearest examples of Camden’s approach to reinvention came during the Great Financial Crisis, when the company launched its contact center. Christiansen called it “the first step in centralization,” but Simonette’s explanation made clear that the move did not come out of theory or trend-chasing. It came out of a broken workflow the business could no longer afford to ignore.

During that period, Simonette ran a pilot that exposed just how badly the existing leasing model was breaking down. “I did a pilot, and 80% of phone calls were missed by our onsite teams,” she said. Worse, “50% of those were sales calls that weren’t answered.” Camden was spending money to drive calls and leads to its communities, then failing to capture too much of the demand it had already paid to create. “That’s really when the light went off,” Simonette said. “Something is terribly wrong.”

What Camden did next is what made the moment matter. In the middle of the Great Financial Crisis, the company did not retreat into the old model. It transformed it by adding a contact center to give onsite teams a hand while providing better service to renters and residents. Looking back, Simonette described that period as “An opportunity to pivot and do something great.” This initiative helped lay the groundwork for Camden’s broader Work Reimagined centralization journey.

The story matters because it shows how Simonette operates. She, and the broader Camden team, are interested in innovation based on evidence, economics, and systems that solve the right problem. That same logic still shapes how she evaluates technology today: start with the operational breakdown, build around what the business actually needs, and prove the value.

The road to work reimagined was not a straight line

Building on the foundation of the contact center, Camden started a Work Reimagined initiative. This began as a grassroots listening tour, and ended with transforming day-to-day operations across the portfolio. 

Simonette traced the beginning of work reimagined back to 2017. “I had this idea in 2017 that nobody was going to want to talk to anybody at the properties ever again,” she said. Her instinct was early, and in some ways ahead of the market, but the first attempt to act on it did not go smoothly. “I set out on this crusade to do self-guided tours. And it was terrible. It didn’t work.” 

That honesty is part of what makes her perspective credible. The story is not one of uninterrupted vision. It is one of working through what failed until the foundational issue became clear. In Camden’s case, the answer was access. “You have to solve for access first,” she said. The company ended up building its own solution, CHIRP, before the larger self-service model could really move forward. Only then did the broader operating system begin to come together.

Once that foundation was in place, Simonette knew what else Camden needed. “There were three things, three things that I was looking for,” she said. “We needed a CRM, a virtual leasing agent, and marketing automation.” Camden partnered with Funnel to develop the earliest iterations of our AI assistant, the rest as they say is history. 

Customer expectations changed the pace of transformation

COVID accelerated Camden’s shift, but Simonette described the real turning point less as a story of forced digital adoption and more as a moment when customer expectations caught up with the model Camden was building. “Our customers’ expectations changed,” she said. Camden could have kept pushing parts of the model forward, but once renters were ready for a more self-service, less in-person experience, the broader operating structure moved faster. “It wouldn’t have come full circle if the customer’s expectation hadn’t been there.”

That insight helps explain why some transformation efforts stall while others stick. It is not enough for a company to decide it wants to modernize. The systems, workflows, and customer behavior have to move into alignment.

That timing mattered. Camden had already been building toward a more self-service, centralized model, but those pieces started to click when customer expectations shifted too. Transformation worked because the operating model, the technology, and the customer were finally moving in the same direction.

Simonette made a similar point about adoption inside the organization. When Christiansen asked what Camden had learned four years into work reimagined, her answer was immediate: “Buy-in absolutely is critical.” 

Executive support mattered, but Camden’s most effective changes also took hold at the grassroots level. She pointed to a leasing agent in Washington, D.C., who saw the value of Funnel almost immediately. With visibility across multiple communities in the nest (what Camden calls their regional pods of communities as a homage to their hummingbird logo), she was no longer limited to the inventory at just one property. “The light bulb went off,” Simonette said. “I’ve just now widened my inventory, which means I can expand my earning potential.”

That kind of moment mattered because Camden’s model did not spread through top-down mandate alone. It gained momentum when people inside the business could see the upside for themselves and started championing the change. Camden was doing the broader work too, listening, refining, and reshaping the model over time, but team members who could see the value early helped make the transformation real. When employees raise their hands for change, operating change moves faster.

The leadership standard for the next phase of multifamily

The companies that win this next chapter will be the ones disciplined enough to know what belongs in the model, what must stay human, and what actually improves the economics and experience of the business.

In Simonette’s language, they will be the ones who know whether the technology really does “move the needle.”