A healthcare executive reflects on 30 years of leadership, the cost of self-editing, and why protecting your voice is essential to building a meaningful career in systems not designed for you.
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Influential Woman · Healthcare
Kelly A. Malloy
ACHE
Founder / Fractional COO, Malloy & Co. Operating Partnerships
Bradenton, FL 34203
1Article published
3Awards received
In Conversation
Kelly Malloy for Bold. Brilliant. Unstoppable.
Read the transcript
Kelly A. Malloy: Speaker: Kelly Malloy, Founder - Malloy & Co. Operating PartnershipsKelly Malloy: Influence is earned through action, not authority.What does being an Influential Woman mean to you?Kelly Malloy: For me, being an influential woman is not about a title. It's about the impact that you get to make every single day on the people and the lives around you. It starts with authenticity and integrity. An influential woman knows who she is. She shows up fully with openness, honesty, and consistency. She doesn't shift to fit into the room. She changes the room simply by being part of it. Influence is earned through action, not authority. I started my career at the bedside as in occupational therapy. The influence I built there was from showing up consistently and leading by example with my patients, with my co-workers, with the physicians. Influential women close the gap between talk and action, between strategy and execution, between what an organization says its values are and how that actually operates. That's where real leaders live, and that's where real influence is built. It's about leaving something lasting. Influence isn't what happens while you're in the room. It's the infrastructure and the culture and the people that you develop who keep performing at high levels long after you've gone. An influential woman asks not just what can I achieve, but what will keep enduring long after I was here.What's one piece of advice you would give to younger women chasing their dreams?Kelly Malloy: Best advice I've ever received and the advice I'd give every young woman today is to be authentically you, not a polished version and not who the room thinks you should be. Stop comparing your path to someone else's. The moment you take your eyes off your own lane, you're gonna lose momentum. Focus on your growth and your next steps, your goals. Run your own race. Your uniqueness is your competitive advantage. I built a career that was distinctly mine, clinical roots that gave me operational credibility, a framework that reflects exactly how I think an embedded model that's the opposite of traditional. None of that happened by following someone else's blueprint for my life. Be brave enough to always evolve and always learn. I've held roles from the bedside to chief operating officer, and every step required courage. Every transition required trusting myself, even when that path might not have been clear. Do the hard thing anyway. Perseverance is a non-negotiable. I've led organizations through hurricanes, global pandemic, financial crisis, massive cultural shifts, and what got us through every one of those was never strategy alone. It was the relentless commitment to just keep going. Don't you dare quit. Chase your dreams with everything you have. Be brave enough to be yourself, resilient enough to know your respect and know your worth, and generous enough to bring other women with you.
Full transcript available
Her Story
About Kelly
Kelly Malloy is a seasoned healthcare executive, Fractional Chief Operating Officer, and founder of Malloy & Co. Operating Partnerships, based in Bradenton, Florida. With more than three decades of experience in hospitals and health systems, she has built a reputation for closing the persistent gap between strategy and execution. Rather than operating as a traditional consultant, Malloy embeds directly within executive teams, partnering with CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and CNOs to drive measurable operational outcomes. Her proprietary PROPEL Forward Framework™ reflects a structured, results-driven approach to stabilizing performance, aligning leadership, and building sustainable infrastructure that endures beyond her engagements. Malloy’s career is distinguished by a rare combination of clinical and operational expertise. She began at the bedside providing occupational therapy, and steadily advanced through leadership roles including Director of Rehabilitation, Associate Administrator, Vice President of Operations, and ultimately Chief Operating Officer at major healthcare institutions. This clinical foundation informs her leadership style, allowing her to build credibility with physicians and frontline staff while designing solutions grounded in the realities of patient care. Over the course of her career, she has led organizations through complex challenges, including disaster response during hurricanes, the COVID-19 pandemic, large-scale service line expansions, and periods of intense financial pressure. As a transformational leader, Malloy focuses on building the operational infrastructure that enables organizations to execute consistently and effectively. Her work emphasizes clear accountability structures, defined decision rights, physician alignment, and disciplined operating cadence. Through her engagements, she has delivered significant results, including double-digit growth in surgical volumes, major expansions in specialty services, improved employee and physician engagement, and rapid gains in quality performance metrics. Driven by a commitment to practical execution and patient-centered care, Malloy continues to help healthcare organizations navigate critical inflection points and achieve lasting operational excellence.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Kelly
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to perseverance and resilience—never giving up and always moving forward. I prioritize openness and honesty in all my interactions, embrace change as an opportunity for growth, and strive to make a meaningful difference every day.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I’ve ever received is to be authentically myself—never get distracted by what others are doing. Stand out by embracing your uniqueness, and remain eager to learn and grow every day. Be brave and courageous in the pursuit of your goals.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My advice to young women entering this industry is to stay curious and never hesitate to ask questions—that’s how you truly learn. Stand tall and proud, make your voice heard, and remember that your perspective and contributions matter. You deserve your seat at the table.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
In my field, the biggest challenge isn’t a lack of strategy—it’s execution. Many health systems know what needs to be done, but implementing it effectively is where the gap lies. This also presents a tremendous opportunity: I’m focused on helping organizations bridge that gap and am eager to connect with more businesses to support their operational needs.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values that guide me in both my work and personal life include focusing on the positive, maintaining a strong work ethic, leading by example, and maintaining integrity through advancement. I am goal-driven, and I prioritize openness and honesty in all my interactions. I believe in mentoring emerging leaders and strive to leave a legacy of support, resilience, and accomplishment.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Kelly
What 30 Years in Healthcare Taught Me About Being Heard
How I Lost My Voice in Healthcare—and Why Getting It Back Changed Everything
What 30 Years in Healthcare Taught Me About Being Heard
I spent thirty years building a career in healthcare. I worked my way up through a system that wasn’t designed with me in mind—as a woman, as someone who led differently than the men around me, and as someone who cared deeply about mission, team, and getting it right.
By almost any measure, I succeeded.
And somewhere along the way, I learned the most important lesson of my career—not in a boardroom win or a budget milestone, but in the moment I realized I had stopped speaking.
Not literally. I was still in every meeting. I still had the title, the seat at the table, and the thirty years of expertise. But I had started to edit myself. To soften. To pre-calculate the risk of every word before I said it. And somewhere in that process, I had quietly handed over the most powerful thing I had: my voice.
If you’re a woman in healthcare—or in any field where the rules were written before you arrived—you probably know this feeling. The slow erosion is the hardest to name. It doesn’t happen all at once. It happens meeting by meeting, interaction by interaction, until one day you realize you’re not leading from strength anymore. You’re surviving.
Here’s what I know now: the women who last—the ones who build careers that are not just long but meaningful—aren’t the ones who figured out how to take up less space. They’re the ones who learned, earlier than I did, to protect their voice as fiercely as they protected their results.
That means building relationships before you need them. It means finding the people in your organization who will speak your name in rooms you’re not in. It means learning the difference between a hard environment that makes you better and a toxic one that just makes you smaller.
And sometimes, it means having the courage to walk away from the thing you built—because what you build next might be the most important work of your life.
I’m writing a book about all of this: the thirty years, the lessons, the moment it nearly broke me, and what I found on the other side. But you don’t need to wait for the book.
Your voice is not a liability. It is your greatest asset. And the women who figure that out—who stop editing themselves into palatability—are the ones who look back on their careers without regret.
Don’t wait to learn that the hard way.
Kelly Malloy is a healthcare executive with 30 years of leadership experience and the founder of Malloy & Co. Operating Partnerships, a fractional COO practice serving healthcare organizations. She is currently writing her first book, Unheard No More, about navigating, surviving, and reinventing a career in a system that wasn’t built for you.
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