When Doree O'Neal walks into a room, people sense something different. It's not a commanding presence or an air of superiority. It's something quieter, something more earned — the kind of calm confidence that comes from having figured out who you are, what you believe, and why it matters. For Doree, that journey took 25 years, a pivot from corporate software to stress-relief coaching, and one very honest 360-degree review that changed everything.
From Temp Work to the Boardroom
Like many of the best stories in career development, Doree's began by accident. A Georgia native with a psychology degree, she found herself doing temp work — what was affectionately called being a "Kelly Girl" — before landing in a role that would change the trajectory of her career. A CFO with a gift for mentorship saw something in her early on that she was still learning to see in herself.
I was so blessed that the CFO of the company was one of those people that was really big into mentorship and being a mentor. He saw this young, Black woman who really was just hungry to learn and he really invested in me and my career path and my future.
That CFO became a crucial early mentor, doing something that might sound obvious but is shockingly rare: he invested in a person, not just a job function. He paid for courses, opened doors, and created a pathway for Doree to move from administrative temp work into technology project management.
This mentorship planted a seed that would grow throughout her career. Over the next two decades, Doree held roles in IT, software, and project management, rising steadily through organizations where her combination of people skills and technical fluency made her indispensable.
The Art of Listening in a Noisy World
If there's one phrase that captures Doree's leadership philosophy, it might be the piece of advice she now shares with every client and every audience she addresses: listen first.
"There's a huge thing for being a leader, for being a responsible employee, for being an entrepreneur: being able to listen. Being able to really hear what people are saying," she says. "Not what you think they're saying. Not preparing your next answer. Actually listening."
In a corporate world obsessed with making your mark and moving fast, this sounds almost quaint. But Doree learned something the hard way — she wasn't always the listener she needed to be.
It took a 360-degree feedback review to get her attention. Over and over, the message came back: "Doree is too busy. Doree doesn't have time. Doree is always rushing." The feedback stung, but it landed. She realized that speed and efficiency — two things she prided herself on — had been getting in the way of the one thing that made leadership real: genuine human connection.
Everything shifted when she made a simple choice: instead of always rushing to the next meeting or the next deliverable, she started actually stopping. Sitting with people. Asking questions. And then — crucially — waiting for the full answer before forming a response.
A Moment That Mattered
One of Doree's proudest moments as a leader came during a corporate restructuring. A new policy limited how long contractors could work for the company, and Doree faced the difficult task of letting go of a team she had built, nurtured, and relied on.
But Doree didn't see her role as simply delivering the bad news. She made a different kind of promise. "Contact us in five months. We'll see where we are. I want you back." She spent months advocating internally, working the system, looking for every possible angle to bring her contractors back when the window reopened.
One of my proudest moments — and I was able to bring a majority of them back. That was a really amazing experience to know that people trusted me enough to wait.
That wasn't just good management — it was leadership in its truest form. These contractors hadn't stayed loyal to a company. They'd stayed loyal to Doree. And Doree had earned that loyalty not through authority, but through follow-through — through being exactly who she said she was.
The Manager vs. the Leader
Somewhere along her journey, Doree developed a clear-eyed view of the difference between a manager and a leader. A manager, she'll tell you, gets results through hierarchy. A leader gets results through trust.
"I aspire to be like that, and with them I will follow them anywhere. There's a lot of managers out there that people don't respect," she says frankly. "And there are leaders that don't have the title of manager who people will follow to the ends of the earth."
In the software world, where technical talent is the lifeblood of an organization, Doree witnessed firsthand the damage that poor leadership can do. Talented engineers and developers leaving not because of the work, but because of who was running the room. She became acutely attuned to what it looked like when someone was managing people versus actually leading them.
This insight didn't come from theory. It came from watching talented people miserable, and from understanding that not every great technician should manage a team — and not every manager deserves to call themselves a leader.
The Entrepreneurial Pivot
After 25 years in software, Doree found herself facing a new kind of leadership challenge: building and leading her own business. She launched a stress-relief coaching practice — and quickly discovered that everything she'd learned about managing others had to be turned inward.
The irony isn't lost on her. She'd spent decades telling people what to do and how to do it in corporate roles. Now, as an entrepreneur, she had to do something harder: trust herself.
I had to become very comfortable with what I coach and being able to talk about it with the same level of confidence.
What struck her most was recognizing that trust and confidence in a coach can't be faked. People don't hire coaches who look uncertain about their own process. They need to see that you've lived what you're teaching. For Doree, that meant getting radically honest about her own stress patterns, her own triggers, and her own need for the practices she was prescribing to others.
Filling Your Own Cup
In her coaching work, Doree teaches something that seems obvious until you realize most of us never do it: don't give from an empty cup.
This philosophy extends directly to leadership. You can't support a team if you're running on fumes. You can't make good decisions under sustained pressure if you've never built the habits that help your nervous system recover. You can't be the calm in someone else's storm if your own inner weather is chaotic.
"We have to find ways to have breaks throughout the day to be able to stop our mind from going off to worst case scenarios," she says. "It sounds simple, but nobody does it. Nobody thinks they have time. And that's exactly when you need it most."
And this is where Doree's career comes full circle. All those years managing stress and people in high-pressure corporate environments weren't a detour from her calling — they were the training ground for it. She knows what it looks like to lead while depleted, and she knows the cost.
What's Next?
When asked what comes next, Doree doesn't want to predict too much. She's learned that when you set your goals too firmly in advance, you can miss the opportunities that weren't on the plan.
There might be more books — her first, Seriously: How I Went from a Hot Mess to a Daring Badass, has already resonated with readers navigating their own transitions. There might be broader speaking, more coaching, new tools for the clients she serves. What she knows is this: she's still learning, still growing, and still paying close attention to the people in her orbit.
I look forward to it. I try not to predict too much what it's going to be like because I enjoy the adventure and the journey.
What makes Doree's story worth paying attention to is that it's not some rarified tale of a natural-born leader. It's the story of someone who worked at it — who took the feedback seriously, did the inner work, built real relationships, and showed up consistently for people who were counting on her.
In a world of managers, that's what separates a true leader.