From the chair to the boardroom — one thesis, twenty years of proof.
Heidi Arndt is a healthcare executive, keynote speaker, and executive coach who has lived both sides of the healthcare leadership equation: clinical and commercial.
Starting her career as a dental hygienist, Heidi rose to become CEO of Strive Dental Management, a private-equity-backed dental service organization in Austin, Texas. Taking the helm during the height of the COVID-19 shutdown, she led a turnaround that grew revenue over 40%, expanded EBITDA nearly 8-fold, and drove approximately 24% same-store growth — culminating in a successful sale to Apex Dental Partners in 2021. Along the way, she guided her team through a statewide winter storm that flooded one of her offices, relocating patients and staff within days and returning the business ahead of plan in under two weeks.
Heidi now works with healthcare executives and clinical leaders to build the same alignment between clinical excellence and business performance that powered her own turnaround — and her own exit.
Keynotes and workshops on leadership, alignment, and growth for healthcare organizations — from a speaker who has actually run the P&L.
Signature Talk: Frontline to Boardroom
Early in her career, Heidi was chairside — seeing patients, building trust one hygiene appointment at a time. One day, her office manager announced that appointment times were being cut from sixty minutes to forty. When the hygiene team asked why, the answer was simply: leadership decided we needed to. No more context than that.
In that moment, a wedge formed. They're out of touch. They don't understand what we do. Do they even care about the patients? The Us vs. Them wedge was created.
Years later, as CEO of a PE-backed DSO, Heidi built what she believed was an airtight growth strategy — only to watch pieces of it never get implemented, and other pieces barely move the financials. When she finally traced why, she found herself back in that same room from her hygienist days. Except this time, she was the executive team the younger version of her had once called out of touch.
Frontline to Boardroom is the talk born from that realization: strategy doesn't fail in the boardroom — it fails in the eighteen inches between the boardroom and the frontline, where teams either receive a strategy they can trust, or a directive they resent. Heidi shows why that gap is the single biggest lever on growth, team performance, and retention — and why closing it takes social capital in the middle of the organization, not another dashboard.
Signature Themes
Heidi draws from the same thesis to build talks tailored to your audience:
Frontline to Boardroom — why growth strategy dies in the translation between the C-suite and the frontline, and how to close that gap.
Alignment as a Financial Asset — how cultural alignment directly moves performance.
The Middle Management Gap in Dentistry — why middle management are the real translation layer between ownership and the frontline, and what happens when that layer is under-resourced.
Social Capital: What Actually Makes or Breaks Your Organization— why trust and relationships, not org charts or playbooks, determine whether a strategy survives contact with a the team.
“I have been following Heidi for over 10 years, and I am so impressed with her knowledge and growth within the industry. She is a trusted expert.”
— Sarah -Attendee, Dykema DSO Conference
“Heidi was a dynamic and informative speaker. I walked away with so many things I can immediately implement into my dental practice.”
— Bonnie -Attendee, Star of the North
“Heidi is a clear expert and always provides current and useful information to improve your dental group.”
— Avinash -DENTSPLY SIRONA World
If you're interested in booking Heidi Arndt for a Speaking Engagement, please email: Heidi@heidiarndt.com