November 11, 2025

Episode 163: Everyone Is a Leader: Building a Coaching Culture at MD Anderson with Mickie DeVeau

At MD Anderson, leadership is not defined by title but by behavior. Mickie DeVeau, Director of the Leadership Institute at MD Anderson, describes a culture where everyone, whether in a suit, a lab coat, or scrubs, is seen as a leader contributing to a shared mission. This philosophy is anchored in a competency model that highlights emotional intelligence, professionalism, drive, and service excellence as essential characteristics for every employee.

Through the Leadership Institute, MD Anderson has established a robust internal coaching program that trains and certifies leaders in partnership with Rice University. Graduates of the program commit to “pay it forward” by coaching three colleagues annually, reinforcing a cycle of continuous learning and development.

This structure ensures that coaching becomes part of the institution’s DNA, driving engagement, retention, and performance while strengthening community across departments and disciplines.

While healthcare continues to evolve through technology and AI, Mickie emphasizes that true progress depends on human connection. Coaching provides a framework for genuine curiosity, empathy, and listening—skills that are essential when serving patients and colleagues alike.

Leaders trained through the program are strategically placed in cross-functional roles to build stronger relationships across the organization, proving that engagement and collaboration thrive when people feel seen, heard, and supported.

The Leadership Institute also leverages storytelling as a tool for transformation. Leaders who have benefited from coaching return to share their experiences, modeling transparency and growth. These personal stories reinforce that leadership is not static. It evolves through continuous reflection, humility, and connection to purpose.

Mickie shares that one of the biggest barriers to leadership development is fear. This includes fear of judgment, failure, or vulnerability. Through intentional coaching and open dialogue, leaders learn to reframe fear into curiosity and aspiration. By starting with a clear vision of what could be possible, individuals are more motivated to close the gap between where they are and where they want to be.

🔗 Connect with Mickie DeVeau on LinkedIn

Everyone Is a Leader: Building a Coaching Culture at MD Anderson with Mickie DeVeau

Guest Bio

Leveraging her natural curiosity, Michelle “Mickie” DeVeau, Psy.D. strives to develop and deliver innovative and customized solutions for her clients, always adapting to their needs, but never sacrificing excellence.

An experienced, resilient professional with demonstrated success across multiple industries, including health care, health insurance, telecommunications, sales, financial services, energy, pharmaceutical, higher education, government, and non-profit, Mickie has 30 years of coaching and consulting experience. Throughout her career, she has led and supported organization-wide change efforts and designed and delivered enterprise-wide initiatives and training in the areas of coaching, mentoring, performance management, process improvement, organizational change management, conflict management, emotional intelligence, and communication.

As a director of the Leadership Institute within MD Anderson Cancer Center, Mickie provides oversight for coaching, mentoring, change enablement, and team science programs, interventions and consultation. The success and impact of the coaching programs at MD Anderson achieved the International Coaching Federation’s (ICF) Coaching Impact Award for Organizations and a “gold” designation with the MEECO Institute (Measuring Employee Experience, Executive Coaching and Culture in Organizations), recognizing that our coaching programs represent best-in-class standards and execution, fulfill rigorous professional standards, address key strategic goals, shape organizational culture and yield discernible and measurable positive impacts. Our mentoring and change enablement programs have also been recognized as excellence in practice by ATD.

Mickie is a Professional Certified Coach with ICF, a Gallup certified strengths coach, and a certified facilitator for various leadership development and training programs, including The Leadership Challenge, Emotional Intelligence, Situational Leadership, Real Colors, Courageous Conversations and CoreClarity (strengths-based facilitation) and assessments such as EQi, Hogan Personality Assessment, StrengthsFinder and Real Colors.

Prior to joining MD Anderson, she worked for the Philadelphia region’s largest health insurer, Independence Blue Cross. She earned her doctorate degree in Organizational Psychology from the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University. Her bachelor degree in Psychology and Business is from the University of Scranton.