Olive Groves
  • Home
  • The Work
  • About
  • Let's Talk
  • More
    • Home
    • The Work
    • About
    • Let's Talk
Olive Groves
  • Home
  • The Work
  • About
  • Let's Talk

Hi, I'm Heather.

I'm an organizational strategist and Gallup-Certified CliftonStrengths Coach. For 17 years I've designed how organizations develop their people — not just sent them to training.

Let's talk.

The pattern behind it.

Every role I held looked different on paper. Different industry, different title, different challenge. Underneath, it was the same work: designing how organizations develop people at scale.


I walked into environments that were undefined, neglected, or broken. I diagnosed what was actually wrong, not what people assumed was wrong. I built systems that didn't exist before me. I aligned learning to business strategy. I made the calls on structure, tools, delivery, and measurement. And I left every organization with infrastructure they could sustain without me.


Five times, across three organizations. Different scale, different complexity, same methodology, same result.


Eventually I sat in the senior director chair at a national training institution, seeing everything that needed to change and not having the authority to change it — because the organization wouldn't create the conditions for the work I knew mattered.


So I built a practice that does nothing else. My philosophy is based on the fact that:


Adults learning through engagement, not instruction.  I design experiences grounded in how adults actually grow — active engagement, reflection, real application, and connection to stories that make the work meaningful. Not modules. Not compliance checklists. Experiences that change behavior.  


Work and life are not separate.  The people in your organization don't leave their humanity at the door. The manager who's struggling to lead is also a parent, a partner, a person navigating their own challenges. When we honor the whole person, the whole organization benefits.  

What I believe about developing people.

Conditions before content.

Conditions before content.

Conditions before content.

The best training in the world fails if the environment doesn't support behavior change. I don't start with what to teach. I start with what conditions have to exist for learning to take root.

Every voice matters.

Conditions before content.

Conditions before content.

The quiet person in the back of the room usually has the best insight. The frontline employee knows things the C-suite doesn't. The work starts by listening to the people most organizations forget to ask.

Strengths over deficits.

Sustainability over spectacle.

Sustainability over spectacle.

I'm a Gallup-Certified CliftonStrengths Coach because developing people starts with understanding what they're already great at, not cataloging what's wrong with them. When managers understand their own strengths and learn to see strengths in their people, everything shifts.

Sustainability over spectacle.

Sustainability over spectacle.

Sustainability over spectacle.

I'd rather build something quiet that lasts for years than something flashy that fades in a week. My job isn't to impress your team with a great workshop. It's to build conditions that are still working when nobody's watching.

The credentials behind the story.

MS in Learning Technologies. Gallup-Certified CliftonStrengths Coach. 17 years across L&D, edtech, and organizational development. Five people development functions built from scratch. Two enterprise LMS implementations with full change management. AI upskilling lead for an entire organization. SLOAN-C Effective Practice Award. Presentations at Training Officers Consortium, OLC Accelerate, and OnTrack with Microsoft EDU.


I also fed 150 marching band kids every Friday night for three years. I can manage your stakeholders.

Chief Conditions Officer

It started as a joke about my title. It stopped being one the third time a CHRO said it was the actual job description.


Conditions are the whole thesis. Every system I've built, every program that outlasted me, every manager who turned into a real people developer — none of it came from better content. It came from an environment built to hold it.


That's what I do now. I build the conditions that hold when everything changes.

Want to work together?

 I'd like to hear what you're building, what's getting in the way, and where you want to go. Every engagement starts with a real conversation.

Let's talk conditions.

Olive Groves LLC 🌱 Humans first. Always.

  • Home
  • The Work
  • About
  • Let's Talk

This website uses cookies.

We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.

Accept