Let’s put together a string of adjectives. Energetic. Empathetic. Driven. Laid back. Visionary. Detailed. Community-oriented. They all apply to Ahron Katz, CEO of Peaks Healthcare Consulting, yet they do not capture him.
I’m in his office and we’re doing an interview. In pops one of his associates who needs a minute from his boss. In pops in another associate, and then Katz’s daughter. Katz himself glances at his phone screen every so often. Yet, the interview is not interrupted. It is said of the legendary Torah scholar of Vilna, Lithuania, R’ Chaim O. Grodzinsky, that he could write two different responsa, one with the left hand and one with the right hand, simultaneously! Ahron Katz seems to be able to handle two (or more) totally different tasks simultaneously. It looks effortless.
This, too, does not capture him.
As I listened to his pre-Denver work history, I heard him jumping from job to job. I mean, everything from selling beer at Washington Redskins’ games (back when they were still called the Redskins) to selling database technology to getting into “really cool meetings with some really big companies,” General Motors, Domino’s Pizza, Pfizer. I heard him losing a job because he sold out the product – cell phone accessary racks for gas stations — faster than the company could replace it. I heard he was not getting paid a salary until after a year on the job. I heard that he was working in advanced deck handling training in professional hockey, that he then worked for a scouting company “but right away I realized that was going to be rough, so I got out of that pretty quickly.” I heard that while he was working by day, he was putting in a night shift at a deli. “I was doing all kinds of things, just trying to make it work.” With Ahron Katz, one needs to listen carefully, because behind the apparent madness there is definitely a method.
When he was carrying heavy vats of beer up and down the steps, screaming, “Beer here!” he noticed that close games were the best games because people stayed and people were drinking then. “Blowouts were never good for business.” He noticed things.
When he looked for jobs, “I only took jobs where I could learn a lot. I didn’t take dead-end jobs. I only took entrepreneurial jobs.” So if he didn’t get a salary for a year, it was worth it. He was learning.
“I always felt that if I wanted to be able to do what I wanted to do, I needed to learn. And I’ve always wanted to start a massive company from the ground up.”
Notice. He was leaning a lot, but not in college. “I thought college was a waste of money. So I quit. I was paying for it myself. And I just didn’t think it was a good use of my money. If figured if I worked really hard, it would take about five years.” He doesn’t finish the sentence. Five years — to become successful. That’s about how it worked out.
Not only does none of this capture Ahron Katz, it doesn’t get to the heart of him, which seeps out, apparently unintentionally, in pieces.
And it certainly doesn’t get to his beginnings.
The Detroit native came to Denver for tenth grade at Yeshiva Toras Chaim.
The curriculum was the Talmud, but mostly what Katz took away were life lessons.
Community lessons. “I got involved. I helped run a youth group called Pirchei. We were on all three sides [West Side, East Side, Southeast Side of Denver]. We built a lot of unity. We were in both schools, Hillel and DAT.”
People lessons. “I think Rabbi [Israel Meir] Kagan was a very big personality. He just really taught us a lot. His demeanor, the way he acted. I had a close relationship with him.”
Family lessons. A few years after graduation, at age 22, he married Rivky, the granddaughter of Rabbi Moshe and Tziporah Heisler. Rabbi Heisler was the longtime head of the Vaad Hakashrus of Denver.
Katz’s overall takeaway from YTC? “I had a great time. It was a lot of fun.” For Ahron Katz, perhaps life lesson #1 was: Life is to be enjoyed.
Some lessons he didn’t learn at Yeshiva Toras Chaim. He seems to have brought them with him from Detroit. Lessons, traits: perceptivity, empathy, drive, intuition.
Following graduation, Katz enrolled in the Yeshiva of Greater Washington in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he found another “unbelievable role model, Rabbi Aaron Lopiansky.”
“I did nine months there,” he says. “And I worked. I really wanted to make money.” That’s when he was a beer vendor for the Redskins, then a mashgiach (kashrut supervisor).
Then he went back to Detroit and picked up more business lessons. From his truncated accessory rack job, he learned that not everyone is ambitious. “In business, ambitions have to align.” From the database job, he learned that switching gears is imperative. “We weren’t really closing [deals] because we didn’t have a certain product. So I moved over to the core business of that company, which was selling leadership audio books.” From the database business, he also learned that the business itself has to move over. “Ford Foundation, Flagstar Bank, these were all people that wanted our technology. The problem is, we didn’t have our app developed. This was when everything was moving to digital. So everyone wanted our app, but we couldn’t develop it fast enough.” If the company couldn’t move over, Katz would.
He was approached to join a nursing home business. “They offered me double the salary, and to pay for my cell phone, to pay for a car. I wasn’t going to do it. I didn’t want to work in nursing homes because they had a bad reputation. They were rough places.” It’s one thing to be able to handle two different tasks simultaneously; it’s a lot bigger to be able to go down two mental tracks simultaneously. “They wanted to hire me for this nursing home in Detroit. So I made them fly me to New York to see how they ran nursing homes. And I saw there was some good utility in it. There was something real. You could do really, really good work taking care of the people in nursing homes. Also, I felt it was a great way to learn how to manage people. It was opening all kinds of possibilities.”
Ahron Katz was 24 years old. “I was young. I took the job.” He set aside one mental track, an initial rejection, for the opposite, a enthusiastic embrace.
That was his last job before he went out on his own.
“I used the loophole in the nursing home system.” Loophole? “You can get a license without a degree if you could take nine credit hours and have someone sign off that you were competent in nursing homes. So they had me work there and had me get a license simultaneously. So I took over as managing director. It was the Hamilton Nursing Home with Priority Healthcare Group. It was a 64-bed, all-male, all-veteran building in the inner city in Detroit. All-veteran — people who served on the front lines, guys that were service-connected 100%. You know, guys that were really beat up.”
After five years, Katz and his wife decided to leave Detroit. “I called it my master’s degree. I remember walking into a mall with my wife and someone called and offered me a six-figure salary, which at the time was a lot of money. And I remember being very emotional. Like, you know, it was pretty much like I went to school for five years and came out earning a six-figure salary.”
What had he learned for his “masters degree?” “I learned a lot about selling, a lot about marketing, a lot about management, leadership, ambition. The hard lessons of life, the hard lessons of business.”
The Katzes moved to southeast Denver. He was a managing partner in a nursing home in Pueblo, Belmont Lodge — to which he had to drive — and the southeast location gave him a good head start.
“I got attracted to the nursing home because of the ability to really care for people. I like that piece of it, and I like the management. You’re creating a lot of value. When you take a nursing home that’s really struggling, or even one that’s good and you make it better, you’re creating a lot of value for the customers, for the staff, for everybody. That’s usually a good thing to do in business.”
Head start southward? Simultaneous with his Pueblo position, Katz and his partners bought a nursing home in Casper, Wyo. Some days of the week he was driving to Pueblo, and the other days he was flying to Casper. “Either Casper or Pueblo. That’s how I spent my days.” He had the schedule down pat. “I’d leave an hour and five minutes before I’d fly. It worked.”
Then, “we ended our partnership. I exited Pueblo and they exited Casper. I was able to take over a couple of other nursing homes in Wyoming.”
In 2020 Katz formed Peaks Healthcare Consulting, based in Denver, active in Denver and Wyoming.
“Our customers are elderly people in need. Ultimately, we’re a management company, kind of like a private equity roll-up. We’re not building nursing homes. We buy them — usually, they’re stressed, and we turn them around. We bring management, leadership, finance, ambition, operations.”
Katz seems to be realizing his dream of founding his own company. How does it feel? “Most days I like what we’re doing. Most days. Everybody has bad days.”
The Katz family exited southeast Denver, moved to Denver’s East side, where they now live and focus not only on business, but on the Jewish community.
Katz prefers to do his Jewish community work not from a position on boards. “But I got thrust onto the board of the shul somehow, and that really started my involvement in a serious way.” The “shul” was the DAT Minyan, which transitioned into the Young Israel of Denver. Katz is a leader in the purchase and refurbishing of Young Israel’s new home, across the street from current location on South Monaco.
“I really got involved there and helped. I didn’t want to go back on the board, but I’ve been very active in helping things move forward.”
Now he is part of a group that launched a local chapter of Bonei Olam, a national organization that offers advice and funding to infertile couples. At the chapter’s initial event it raised $200,000.
Katz’s cousin, Rabbi Yisrael Katz, revived the local chapters of NCSY (“National Council of Synagogue Youth”). Yisrael Katz drew his cousin Ahron into NCSY. Hillel Academy is another focus of Ahron Katz. “I’ve stayed off boards, but people come to me to discuss ideas, plans.”
Here we begin to reach the heart of Ahron Katz. I ask: “What in your business training gives you the ability to offer advice in a totally different sphere? Businesses are for profit. These organizations are not-for-profit. What gives you that bridge?”
For Katz, there is no bridge because there is no separation. “Ultimately, the goal of every business, every synagogue, should be to create value for people,” he says. “I think many nonprofits get lost on that, and that’s when they fall apart. When nonprofits are focused on creating value, that’s when they do good. I think businesses work the same way.
“There’s no real difference. It’s an artificial distinction. One person is mission-based, and one person is profit-based, but in both cases value creation is what you’re selling.
“Shuls think that they’re entitled to members. They’re not. They’re selling a membership. They don’t think of it that way, but they are. Someone has to part from their money to give to the shul. The shul has to provide good programming. It has to provide for the needs of its members.
“You have to create value. You create value, you can get money. It’s very simple to me.”
Behind Ahron Katz’s is a search for value creation. Not only in business and in community, but in friendships and family.
He is looking to create value and is drawn to others who do the same. He was drawn to his rabbinical role models in yeshiva. With the Three Leaf Group in Detroit (a audio book company), “I met some incredible mentors. I met a lot of great people.” At Hamilton Nursing Home, he was profoundly affected by military veterans.
For Ahron Katz the ultimate value creation is in people.
© IJN 2025