Denise Decandia

I am a behavioral health entrepreneur, executive leader, and Organizational Behavior Management practitioner with over 25 years of leadership experience in building evidence-based organizations in complex, mission-driven environments. I currently serve as Chief Business Development Officer at Kind Behavioral Health, where I focus on growth strategy, partnerships, and systems that support sustainable scale. I founded the organization in 2006, initially as Creative Consultants and later as the Carolina Center for ABA and Autism Treatment. I previously served in CEO and COO roles before bringing in strategic partners to support the next stage of growth. Helping build Kind into a multi-site organization remains one of my proudest professional accomplishments. Earlier in my career, I served on the founding board of the Mariposa School, a nonprofit organization for children with autism, from 2002, and held the role of Program Director before transitioning to leadership and founding my own organization. That experience shaped my understanding of governance, program development, and organizational responsibility. My work is grounded in Organizational Behavior Management, applying behavioral science to leadership, culture, and performance. I approach organizations from an executive and operational perspective, informed by experience aligning vision, structure, and execution, including EOS-based organizational alignment. Outside of Kind, I am the Founder and CEO/COO of Org Excel, an organizational operating model designed to help leadership teams align people, structure, and execution. Org Excel applies evidence-based principles from Applied Behavior Analysis and Organizational Behavior Management to diagnose organizational misalignment and support enterprise-wide or targeted system-level change. I am also the President of Everyday Kindness, a nonprofit organization that supports individuals and families through community-based initiatives rooted in compassion and dignity. In parallel, I am completing doctoral research in Organizational Behavior Management, examining how perceived organizational support and supervisory practices influence workforce stability. I am conducting additional research in Applied Behavioral Leadership (ABL), a leadership framework grounded in OBM that conceptualizes leadership as an observable and measurable system. A manuscript on ABL is currently under submission for publication consideration.