Leadership · Learning · Organizational Development · Change
Most organizations don't lack a plan. They lack the readiness to act on it.
Since 2009 we have built the leadership capability, learning systems, and change discipline behind statewide modernizations, regional health systems, and global brands — and left them running after we go.
Selected engagements
What we do
Four practices, one throughline
Engagements are scoped independently but designed to reinforce each other. Most clients start with one and grow into two.
01
Leadership Development
Programs and coaching for the people who set the tone — first-time managers through the executive team. Built around the decisions your leaders are facing this quarter, not case studies from someone else's company.
1,500+ Marriott leaders trained worldwide to 99% engagement scores. 350 leaders across 31 university and college contracts for Thompson Hospitality.
02
Learning & Capability
Learning strategy, curriculum design, LMS architecture, and the measurement layer underneath. We design for transfer: what happens on the Monday after the workshop is the only measure that counts.
System-wide learning ecosystem and corporate learning university built for a 6,000-person regional health system.
03
Organizational Development
Structure, roles, culture, succession, and the operating rhythms underneath them. Diagnostic first, always — we will tell you when the problem isn't the one you hired us to solve.
Leadership pipeline and succession frameworks designed and implemented at enterprise scale in regulated environments.
04
Change Management
Stakeholder analysis, communication strategy, workforce readiness, and the unglamorous follow-through that decides whether a transformation is real. We stay through the messy middle.
Medicaid modernization for Florida AHCA. Statewide EHR implementation across 22 psychiatric centers and 15,000+ staff for NYS OMH.
Change-Ready Leadership
A co-branded program in development with Barb Glassman and G-FORCE Collaborations. Enterprise change fails on human readiness far more often than on technical design. This line pairs Braveheart's change architecture and learning systems with G-FORCE's emotional intelligence and conscious-organization practice — so the leaders carrying a transformation have the self-awareness and the mechanics to carry it.
Both firms are Rochester-founded and have worked adjacent to each other for years, including through Certified Workplace Ready™.
In process. Scope, curriculum, and delivery model are being finalized. If this is the problem in front of you right now, get in touch — early engagements help shape it.
How we work
Ground, Rally, Advance, Hold
A four-stage method you can repeat internally when you're explaining the engagement to your own leadership.
One
Ground
Stakeholder analysis, business process review, readiness assessment. Understand the terrain before committing to it.
Two
Rally
Communication strategy and executive alignment. Get the people who must move, moving together.
Three
Advance
Capability built in flight — blended learning, coaching, role-based pathways — not in a classroom afterwards.
Four
Hold
Measurement, reinforcement, and ownership transfer, so the change survives our exit.
Why Braveheart
A cairn is built by everyone who passes
Sir William Wallace is our founder's ancestor. What's remembered is the defiance; what's useful is the method. At Stirling Bridge he won by choosing ground that neutralized a stronger opponent, and by convincing ordinary people that acting together was less dangerous than waiting.
That is the work. Read the terrain before committing. Give people a reason to move. Build something that holds after the founder is gone — which, in his case, it did.
Courage isn't a temperament. It's a capability, and capabilities can be built.
Start with a conversation, not a proposal
An hour. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right fit — and who to call if we aren't.
Services
Four practices, scoped independently
Every engagement begins with a diagnostic. We would rather tell you the problem is somewhere else than sell you a program that won't hold.
01
Leadership Development
Your managers were promoted because they were good at the job they no longer do. That gap is the single most expensive untreated problem in most organizations.
We design and deliver leadership programs for the full pipeline — first-time supervisors through the executive team — and coach individually where the stakes justify it. Content is built around live decisions your leaders are carrying, so the transfer problem is solved by construction rather than by follow-up email.
What an engagement includes
- Leadership capability diagnostic and pipeline mapping against your strategy
- Curriculum design and facilitation — instructor-led, virtual, blended, or self-paced
- Executive and leadership coaching, Gallup-credentialed
- Succession framework and readiness criteria you can actually administer
- Measurement tied to engagement, retention, and business outcomes
Typical shape
Three to twelve months. Cohort programs usually run six to nine months with coaching layered through. Executive coaching engagements run six months minimum.
Proof
1,500+ Marriott leaders trained worldwide within one year through Great Manager Fundamentals, reaching 99% employee engagement scores alongside increased sales and customer satisfaction. An intensive leadership program for 350 leaders across 31 university and college contracts at Thompson Hospitality.
02
Learning & Capability
Most learning functions can tell you completion rates. Very few can tell you what changed.
We build learning organizations end to end: strategy, curriculum, platform, governance, and the measurement layer that connects all of it to quality and performance outcomes. We have stood up functions from zero and rebuilt ones that had drifted into order-taking.
What an engagement includes
- Learning strategy and operating model, including build-versus-buy decisions
- Curriculum architecture using ADDIE, rapid course development, and adult learning theory
- LMS and performance platform selection, implementation, and integration into real workflows
- AI-enabled content curation and personalized learning pathways
- Onboarding and compliance programs for regulated environments
- Metrics tied to quality outcomes, regulatory compliance, and organizational performance
This isn't for you if
You need a single workshop delivered next month. We are not a training vendor, and a one-off session from us will cost more and do less than it should.
Proof
A system-wide learning ecosystem and corporate learning university for a 6,000-person regional health system, spanning clinical, operational, and administrative functions — including enterprise LMS, performance and survey platforms, and a measurement layer reported to executive leadership on a standing cadence.
03
Organizational Development
When the same problem keeps returning after you have fixed it twice, the problem is structural.
We work on the architecture underneath performance: how roles are defined, how decisions travel, how the culture rewards what it says it values, and what happens when a key person leaves. Inclusion and belonging strategy sits inside this practice — as a capability that affects retention and performance, not as a standalone initiative.
What an engagement includes
- Organizational diagnosis — structure, roles, decision rights, operating rhythms
- Culture and engagement measurement, including large-scale survey design and analysis
- Leadership pipeline and succession frameworks
- Performance management design and operational restructuring
- Inclusion and belonging strategy, integrated into talent processes rather than bolted on
- Enterprise communication frameworks for executive messaging and alignment
Typical shape
Diagnostic phase of four to eight weeks, then a scoped implementation. We will not propose implementation before the diagnostic is done.
04
Change Management
The technology usually works. The adoption is where programs die.
We lead the human side of enterprise implementations — stakeholder strategy, communications, workforce readiness, training, and the sustained follow-through that determines whether a transformation is real twelve months later. Much of this work has been in healthcare and public sector environments where a failed rollout has consequences for patients and citizens, not just for a quarter.
What an engagement includes
- Stakeholder analysis, impact assessment, and readiness diagnostics
- Communication and engagement strategy across affected populations
- Training strategy, curriculum, and delivery aligned to the implementation timeline
- Business process review and workforce readiness planning
- Adoption measurement, reinforcement, and ownership transfer
- AI-enabled workflow modernization and its workforce implications
Proof
Medicaid modernization for Florida's Agency for Healthcare Administration, serving 250,000+ provider members. Statewide Oracle EHR implementation for the New York State Office of Mental Health across 22 psychiatric centers and 15,000+ staff.
Not sure which one you need?
That's a normal place to start. The diagnostic conversation is free and often ends with us naming a different problem than the one you called about.
Approach
Ground, Rally, Advance, Hold
Four stages, in order. The method is deliberately plain so that you can repeat it to your own board without us in the room.
Stage one
Ground
Understand the terrain before committing to it.
Every engagement opens with diagnosis, and we hold the line on this even when a client arrives certain of what they need. Stakeholder analysis, business process review, readiness assessment, and a candid read of what the organization has already tried and why it didn't hold.
The output is a written diagnostic that names the actual constraint. Sometimes it confirms the brief. Often it doesn't, and we would rather lose the larger engagement than deliver against the wrong problem.
Stage two
Rally
Get the people who must move, moving together.
Alignment is not a kickoff meeting. It is the work of making a change legible to every population it touches — executives who must fund it, managers who must carry it, and the staff who will decide with their behavior whether it happens.
We build the communication architecture, sequence the conversations, and equip leaders to have them. In regulated and unionized environments this stage takes longer than anyone budgets for, and shortening it is where most transformations quietly fail.
Stage three
Advance
Capability built in flight, not in a classroom afterwards.
Learning is designed for the moment of use. Role-based pathways, blended and AI-enabled delivery, coaching where the stakes justify it, and reinforcement built into the operating rhythm rather than appended to it.
We measure adoption continuously and adjust in-cycle. The plan at week twelve should not look identical to the plan at week one; if it does, nobody was listening.
Stage four
Hold
The change has to survive our exit.
Ownership transfer is planned from the first week, not improvised in the last. Internal facilitators are certified, documentation is left in a form your team will actually maintain, measurement is handed to someone with the authority to act on it, and governance is named.
A cairn is built one stone at a time by everyone who passes, and it marks the route for whoever comes next. That is the standard we hold ourselves to: the capability stays after the consultant leaves.
If you need us again next year for the same problem, we did it wrong.
Clients & Results
What the work has actually produced
Three engagements in detail, and the full client record beneath them.
Public sector · Statewide modernization
New York State of Health
Director of Learning & Development · 2016–2018
- Situation
- New York's statewide insurance marketplace was implementing Medicaid, Medicare, and ACA systems across multiple sites. The learning function required to support 4,250+ employees through it did not exist.
- What we did
- Built the department from zero — a 70-plus person learning organization across multiple locations. Set learning strategy, designed onboarding and compliance curricula for Medicare, Medicaid, and ACA systems, ran stakeholder engagement and workforce readiness, and managed executive relationships and implementation risk throughout the modernization.
- What held
- A functioning learning organization with its own measurement discipline, operating in a high-volume regulated environment through the most demanding phase of the program.
95%+ quality performance maintained at 5% attrition across 4,250+ employees during a statewide digital transformation.
Healthcare · Enterprise learning architecture
Episcopal Health Services
Director of Learning & Development · 2022–2025
- Situation
- A 6,000-person regional health system with learning distributed unevenly across clinical, operational, and administrative functions, and no coherent link between development activity and quality outcomes.
- What we did
- Architected a system-wide learning ecosystem and launched a corporate learning university aligned to quality, performance, and leadership readiness. Implemented AI-enabled enterprise LMS, performance, and survey platforms integrated into the workflows managers and clinicians already used. Designed the leadership pipeline and succession framework, and established enterprise communication frameworks supporting executive messaging and physician engagement.
- What held
- Learning metrics tied to quality outcomes and regulatory compliance, reported to executive leadership on a standing cadence — which is what moved learning from a cost line to a governance input.
A single learning ecosystem serving 6,000+ employees across a matrixed, heavily regulated health system.
Government · Medicaid modernization
Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration
Senior OCM Communication Lead · 2025–2026
- Situation
- A Medicaid modernization program touching a provider network of more than 250,000 members, with adoption risk spread across an enormous and loosely connected population.
- What we did
- Led communication strategy and stakeholder engagement for the transformation, developed training strategy and curriculum, and provided implementation support through rollout — translating structural change into workforce readiness rather than training volume.
- What held
- A communication and readiness architecture proportionate to the size of the affected population, rather than a training catalog nobody would complete.
250,000+ provider members reached through the modernization program.
Also
New York State Office of Mental Health
Statewide Oracle Electronic Health Record implementation. Stakeholder analysis, needs analyses, and communication and stakeholder plans for onboarding and implementation across 22 psychiatric centers and 15,000+ staff.
Also: the Hawaiʻi Rural Health Transformation Plan, where we developed strategy and content supporting an enterprise-wide Health Information Exchange implementation and custom curriculum.
The record
Client engagements
- AT&T Digital Life — Nationwide learning strategy & implementation, 2013–2015
- Verizon — Sales enablement & training, 2015–2016
- BetterUp — Sales enablement, 2019–2021
- Dick's Sporting Goods — Inclusion strategy; store operations training, 2019–2020
- University of Rochester — Leadership Coaching Certification Program, 2018–2020
- Builders Exchange of Rochester — Executive coaching; organizational strategy, 2019–2022
- Anthony L. Jordan Healthcare — Organizational strategy; recognition program, 2018–2020
- Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce — Professional development program, 2017–2020
- Thompson Hospitality — Customer service; leadership development; training division strategy, 2016–2017
- NYS Wyoming County Social Services — Leadership development, 2011–2012
- South Beach Group Hotels — Employee engagement; leadership development, 2009–2010
- Marriott & DHL Express — Global leadership and enablement programs
Want the detail behind any of these?
Ask. We will walk you through what worked, what didn't, and what we would do differently.
Partners
What we deliver with others
We keep this page separate so it is always clear what Braveheart delivers directly and what we deliver alongside a partner firm.
Change-Ready Leadership
Developed jointly with Barb Glassman, President & CEO of G-FORCE Collaborations. Enterprise change fails on human readiness far more often than on technical design — leaders are asked to carry a transformation without ever being equipped to manage their own response to it, let alone anyone else's.
This line pairs Braveheart's change architecture, stakeholder strategy, and learning systems with G-FORCE's emotional intelligence and conscious-organization practice. The intent is a single program that develops the self-awareness and the mechanics together, delivered to leadership populations inside live transformations rather than as standalone development.
Both firms were founded in Rochester and have worked adjacent to one another for years, including through Certified Workplace Ready™, which Barb co-founded.
In process. Scope, curriculum, pricing, and delivery model are being finalized and this page will be updated as they settle. If this is the problem in front of you now, get in touch — early engagements help shape the design.
Programs we bring to clients
These are delivered or licensed by partner organizations. We recommend and implement them where they fit; we don't claim them as our own.
Certified Workplace Ready™
Partner programA professional development program focused on social-emotional skills and responsible decision-making for people new or newer to the workplace. Useful where early-career attrition, supervisor load, or onboarding quality is the presenting problem. Co-founded by Barb Glassman of G-FORCE Collaborations.
certifiedworkplaceready.com →LifeGuides®
Partner network · Strategic advisory roleA peer network that matches employees facing a significant life challenge with trained Guides who have navigated the same one. It fills a real gap between an EAP and a manager conversation, and it addresses one of the largest untreated sources of lost productivity in most organizations. Our founder serves as a strategic advisor to LifeGuides.
lifeguides.com →Coaching networks
Delivery partnersWhere an engagement calls for coaching at a scale beyond our own bench, we work with established coaching platforms and independent ICF-credentialed coaches. Our founder is a Gallup Leadership Coach and past faculty in the University of Rochester's ICF-accredited Leadership Coaching Program, so we assess these partners on the same standard we hold ourselves to.
About
A practice, not a portfolio of decks
Braveheart Consultants has operated since 2009. In that time we have designed and scaled enterprise learning systems for thirteen organizations, and led change for state agencies, health systems, and global brands.
Founder & Principal
Will Wallace, M.S.
Enterprise learning and organizational development executive.
Will builds the leadership capability organizations need before they need it. Over two decades he has designed and scaled learning ecosystems for health systems, global brands, technology companies, and government agencies — leading functions as large as 70 professionals.
As Director of Learning & Development for Episcopal Health Services, he architected a system-wide learning ecosystem for a 6,000-person regional health system, launched a corporate learning university aligned to quality and leadership readiness, and owned the measurement layer connecting learning to quality outcomes and regulatory compliance. Earlier, at the New York State of Health marketplace, he built and led a 70-plus person learning organization supporting 4,250+ employees through a statewide digital transformation, holding 95%+ quality performance at 5% attrition.
His approach is grounded in behavioral science. He is known for helping executives understand how lived experience shapes leadership behavior — an evidence-based lens that makes development stick where conventional programs plateau. He is an early and practical adopter of AI in the talent function, designing AI-enabled blended learning, content curation, and personalized pathways inside enterprise systems.
Will is past president of ATD Rochester, co-founder of DisruptHR Rochester, and past faculty in the University of Rochester's ICF-accredited Leadership Coaching Program. He holds an M.S. in Organizational Learning and Leadership and a B.S. in Business Administration from Barry University, and is completing an EdD in Leadership & Innovation at Purdue University.
Vision
Courage built into the system, not left to the brave.
We work toward organizations that do not depend on exceptional individuals to survive change — where the capability to face hard things is designed, taught, measured, and shared, and where the people carrying a transformation are equipped rather than expended.
Mission
We build the capability that turns decisions into adoption — then hand it over.
We work with health systems, government agencies, nonprofits, and global brands where a failed change costs more than a quarter — it costs patients, citizens, and careers. We diagnose before we prescribe, build capability in flight rather than in a classroom, and transfer ownership before we leave.
Values
Six commitments, and what each one costs us
A value with no trade-off is a slogan. These are the ones we hold when holding them is expensive, so we have written down the price.
01
Diagnose before prescribing
Every engagement opens with a diagnostic, and we hold that line even when a client arrives certain of what they need. We name the actual constraint, in writing.
What it costs usWe lose work by telling clients the problem is somewhere else. We would rather lose the engagement than deliver against the wrong problem.
02
Build to leave
Ownership transfer is planned in the first week, not improvised in the last. Internal facilitators get certified, documentation is left in a form your team will maintain, and measurement goes to someone with authority to act on it.
What it costs usWe design ourselves out of recurring revenue. If you need us again next year for the same problem, we did it wrong.
03
Evidence over assertion
Behavioral science, measurement, and honest data — not charisma, and not a framework borrowed whole from a company that looks nothing like yours.
What it costs usSlower, less flattering answers. Sometimes the finding is that a leader's favorite initiative is not working.
04
Everyone carries a stone
A cairn is built by everyone who passes. Change belongs to the many, so we design for the frontline supervisor and the night-shift nurse, not only for the steering committee.
What it costs usAlignment takes longer than executives want it to, and we will not compress it to protect a launch date.
05
Access is a design decision
Who gets developed, who gets told, and who can actually use the system are choices — and they are usually made by default. We surface them and make them deliberately.
What it costs usWe raise the question of who is being left out at moments when nobody asked, and we will not build a leadership pipeline that quietly reproduces the room it started in.
06
Steady in the messy middle
Courage is a discipline, not a temperament. The hardest stretch of any change is after the launch and before the results, when attention has moved on. We stay.
What it costs usWe turn down work we do not have the capacity to finish, and we decline engagements scoped to end at go-live.
The name
Why Braveheart
Sir William Wallace is our founder's ancestor. What's remembered is the defiance; what's useful is the method. At Stirling Bridge he won by choosing ground that neutralized a stronger opponent, and by convincing ordinary people that acting together was less dangerous than waiting.
The mark is a cairn. In the Highlands a cairn is built one stone at a time by everyone who passes, and it marks the route for whoever comes next. It is close to a literal description of the work: capability accumulated by many hands, left behind as a guide.
Courage isn't a temperament. It's a capability, and capabilities can be built.
Affiliations
Where we show up
- Past President, ATD Rochester
- Co-Founder, DisruptHR Rochester
- Past Faculty, University of Rochester Leadership Coaching Program
- VP Community Engagement, NAAAHR
- Strategic Advisor — EHS Nursing Residency, St. John's ICARE, LifeGuides
- Member, Association of Change Management Professionals
- Member, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Recognition
Awards
- Briljent Bravo Award — multiple-time recipient, 2025–2026
- Episcopal Health Services ICARE Award, 2023; ION Award, 2024
- Maximus MVP, 2018
- Fontainebleau Excellence Award, 2009
- DHL STAR Award — multiple-time recipient, 2007–2008
- Marriott MVP Award — multiple-time recipient, 2001–2006
- Delta Epsilon Iota National Honor Society
Contact
Start with a conversation
An hour, no proposal attached. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit — and who to call if we aren't.
Send us a note
Or tell us roughly what's going on. We reply within two business days.
Direct
Phone
(954) 683-2052Location
Fairport, New York
Engagements delivered nationally and remotely
Before you write
It helps to know three things: roughly how many people are affected, what you have already tried, and what has to be true twelve months from now. If you don't know yet, that's fine — say so and we'll work it out together.