Ann Brandau
Healthcare Executive | Healthcare Consultant | Strategy & Performance Improvement Leader
Ann Brandau has spent her career proving a single idea: that measuring outcomes and challenging assumptions can move organizations and communities others had written off. She is Principal Consultant at Prosperity Consulting, and her path to that work ran through healthcare executive suites, an elected county commission seat, a state higher-education board, and one of the Kansas City region's hardest redevelopment projects
What she does now: As Principal Consultant at Prosperity Consulting, Brandau advises hospitals, physician practices, and nonprofit organizations on the financial, operational, and regulatory challenges that decide whether they succeed over the long term Drawing on years in healthcare executive and consulting roles, her work spans strategic planning, operational improvement, payer contracting, regulatory compliance, physician practice operations, business development, and organizational turnarounds. She has helped organizations recover lost revenue, negotiate complex payer agreements, expand access to care, and build strategies that strengthen both financial sustainability and patient outcomes across rural hospitals, community health centers, specialty practices, and nonprofit healthcare organizations.
A record across sectors: Brandau served three terms as a Wyandotte County Commissioner, where she chaired the Economic Development Standing Committee and led numerous redevelopment and public policy initiatives She was appointed and later reappointed by the
Governor of Kansas to two terms on the Kansas Board of Regents, the maximum allowed by law, helping oversee the state's public higher education system, including the University of Kansas Health System and the University of Kansas Medical Center
Rebuilding a neighborhood: As Executive Director of the Argentine Neighborhood Development Association, Brandau led one of the region's most ambitious redevelopment efforts. She helped transform a 17-acre Superfund site that had sat contaminated and abandoned for more than three decades into a working neighborhood market, partnering with Walmart and a coalition of public and private stakeholders to bring grocery access, employment, and investment to one of Kansas' most economically challenged neighborhoods. She secured millions of dollars for sidewalks, curbs, parks, senior housing, libraries, and public safety, and advocated for residents facing chronic flooding and other long-neglected infrastructure problems.
Alongside her consulting work, Brandau writes about leadership, resilience, public service, and the ways institutions shape individual lives Her writing examines identity, public perception, institutional failure, and the resilience required to rebuild after life's most difficult chapters Whether advising a healthcare organization, leading a community initiative, or telling her own story, her work rests on the same belief: lasting change begins with courage, grows through collaboration, and succeeds when people are willing to challenge assumptions in pursuit of something better.
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