By Stanford Erickson

If the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) had come up with a wish list of who best they might hire to manage their Arlington, Va.-based national chiropractic lobbying association, they probably could not have come up with a more qualified individual than their recently hired Executive Vice President William K. O’Connell.

Look at these qualifications:

• He is an undergraduate of the University of California at Berkeley, has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of San Francisco, and a master’s degree in public administration from Northern Illinois University.

• He was the assistant executive director for the American Dietetic Association in Chicago for six years.

• He then went on to be the deputy director and chief financial officer for the American Osteopathic Association (also in Chicago) for 12 years.

• He became the number two executive officer for the American Board of Anesthesiology based in Raleigh, N.C., for seven years.

• He eventually moved to Washington, D.C., and in the next five years, served as executive director of the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research, and then executive director, government affairs at the National Safety Council.

In addition to all his experience with associations — learning to run them prudently and becoming knowledgeable of how Congress, the executive branch, and regulatory departments really operate — he has a well-documented heart for helping people.

In the beginning

“I was raised on the East Coast — Boston and New York — but after Catholic high school, I traveled to the West Coast determined to be of some public service,” says O’Connell.

“I was concerned with poor people’s civil rights and ended up joining the VISTA program as a community organizer for migrant workers in the San Joaquin Valley of California.”

At Berkeley, O’Connell studied cultural anthropology while living in Oakland and commuting to college on a bicycle. To pay for school, rent, and food, he taught school.

O’Connell attributes his initial interest in healthcare to his father, who was an executive with pharmaceutical companies.

Bob Draba, PhD, MBA, JD, and O’Connell’s former boss at the American Osteopathic Association, notes that in addition to O’Connell’s “plethora” of talents, what Draba really admires about O’Connell as a manager is his problem-solving ability.

“Bill has a laser-like ability to focus on a problem and work the problem with dogged persistence until the problem is solved,” says Draba.

Well-traveled man

“I think an obvious advantage I bring to ACA, in addition to my experience with various associations, is having lived and worked in so many different geographic areas of the country,” O’Connell says.

“Now when I travel to attend various chiropractic state associations — like the ones I attended in California and New Jersey — I can connect very easily to explain how the ACA builds value for its membership.”

A significant amount of his time is spent in meeting with groups of chiropractors throughout the country and explaining the need for more of them to join the ACA. There are more than 60,000 chiropractors in the United States, but only 15,000 are active members of the ACA.

“Legislators, both state and federal, respond to aroused voters and especially doctors of chiropractic because their influence can include the patients under their care,” says O’Connell. “Also, ACA, in particular, has benefitted from members of Congress — both Senate and the House — who have had excellent care from a local chiropractor and, because of that, have fought for us legislatively.”

Usually, it is better to be lucky than good. But it would appear that with O’Connell, the ACA has hired someone who is both.

Not only was ACA fortunate to obtain someone with O’Connell’s experience and credentials, but O’Connell was equally fortunate he became the operating head of ACA about the same time it achieved one of its greatest legislative successes in its history.

Whatever one’s thoughts about the national healthcare reform legislation signed into law in March, the final version of the act contained the all-important nondiscrimination language championed by Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Chris Dodd (D-CT), and necessary for chiropractic.

“The critical and historic point to remember is that Section 2706 will apply to all Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) plans, both fully insured and self-insured, with plan dates of 2014 and beyond,” says John Falardeau, ACA vice president of government relations.

“The scope of the application of Section 2706 is extensive and unprecedented. It breaks down the barriers of ERISA pre-emption of self-insured plans and expands notions of nondiscrimination in terms of participation or coverage to virtually the entire