Donna O’Connor

Founder & CEO, AndHeal™ | Biology-Informed Leadership Performance

Houston, Texas, United States

About

Most organizations have already invested in corporate wellness. The programs exist. The intentions are genuine. And for most leadership teams, the needle has not moved. Organizations at this level learn to absorb the signal. Decision consistency varies week to week. Recovery after high-demand periods shortens. Sleep disruption, stress reactivity, and fragmented focus become the operating condition rather than the exception. These patterns get attributed to workload or complexity — and that attribution is understandable. It is why the pattern continues to compound. This is a known pattern under sustained organizational demand. The investment has been made. The programs have run. The gap remains — because the layer that determines whether a leadership team can sustain performance has never been structurally addressed. Traditional wellness addresses behavior — activity, mindfulness, stress management. It operates at the surface. Surface-level intervention cannot reach a structural problem. Performance is biological before it is strategic. The systems that govern executive function are physiological before they are behavioral. When those systems are under sustained load, the decline looks like a leadership problem. It is a biological one. What the organization continues to attribute to workload is, in most cases, a recovery architecture that was never built. Performance compensates through willpower until it cannot. Neither wellness programs nor leadership development operates at that layer. That is what AndHeal™ addresses. I founded AndHeal™ after 15 years as CEO of a memory care enterprise focused on Alzheimer's and cognitive decline. What that experience produced was not a theory — it was pattern recognition developed across hundreds of cases at institutional scale. The biological systems that govern cognitive function under sustained demand behave consistently. That consistency makes them addressable. A B.S. in Biology, B.S. in Nursing, and Functional Medicine certification form the scientific foundation. The application is organizational — leadership capacity as biological infrastructure, measured and addressed at the system level. The outcome is not optimized behavior. It is biological stability that makes high performance structural rather than effortful — and recoverable rather than compounding. The gap between what leadership teams are biologically capable of and what sustained organizational demand actually requires does not resolve on its own. It widens under the exact conditions that make it hardest to address.

Experience

  • Founder and CEO at AndHeal™
    Jan 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 6 mos

    AndHeal™ is a biology-informed leadership performance platform built for executives, founders, and organizations operating under sustained demand. The work applies functional medicine principles and informed biology to identify the physiological patterns that erode decision quality, cognitive clarity, and leadership capacity before they become visible performance problems. AndHeal™ works with private executive clients and organizations through structured engagements — from individual concierge programs to corporate workshops, leadership intensives, and organizational advisory. The foundation is biological. The outcomes are strategic.

  • Founder at The 10X Pivot™
    Sep 2025 - Jan 2026 · 5 mos

    Strategy consulting practice. Predecessor to AndHeal™.

  • Owner and Founder at Pivoting for Success
    Nov 2022 - Sep 2025 · 2 yrs 11 mos

    Business strategy and advisory practice established following the exit from a 15-year healthcare enterprise. Focused on operational consulting for small and mid-sized businesses during a period of strategic transition.

  • CEO/President at Assisted Living Consulting & Management Services (ALCMS LLC)
    Jan 2013 - Sep 2025 · 12 yrs 9 mos

    Full-range consulting and management services for assisted living facilities — conversions, start-up operations, staffing, sales, and regulatory compliance. Operating arm supporting the Heritage Retreat enterprise and external facility clients.

  • Advisory Board Director and Executive Director at Janus Communities LLC
    Feb 2024 - Aug 2025 · 1 yr 7 mos

    Paid advisory role. Provided strategic and operational guidance drawing on 15 years of senior living and memory care enterprise experience.