A Docent is a guide — someone who knows the terrain and walks alongside you, without owning the collection and without anything to sell. That is the role, and it is why the firm is named for it.
Henry Noey | Managing Principal
Henry has sat in every seat in this relationship — the employer hiring the advisor, the firm being hired, and the organization negotiating with both. As Docent’s founder, he helps HR, Finance, and Procurement leaders choose the right advisor, reset relationships that have drifted, and keep good ones performing.
On the advisory side, he held senior leadership roles at Willis Towers Watson, Aon, and KPMG. On the employer side, he was Director of Health Care Programs at Cooper Industries, hiring and managing advisors, and built MD Anderson Cancer Center’s first function for negotiating with insurers and networks. That range is why he reads an advisor’s incentives accurately, and why clients and incumbent firms both trust him in the room.
Henry is a graduate of Sam Houston State University and holds the Global Professional in Human Resources (GPHR) certification. He serves as Board Chair of Gulf Coast Blood, one of the largest community blood centers in the United States, supplying 170 hospitals and healthcare facilities across 26 counties, including the Texas Medical Center. He has also held nonprofit leadership roles with the National MS Society and First Tee of Greater Houston.
Catherine has seen a wide cross-section of consulting and brokerage firms up close — their people, their approaches, and how differently they treat the same client problem. At Docent she leads Strategic Fit preparation, renewal readiness, and relationship reset work, helping leadership teams say what they actually need before the conversation gets formal.
Before Docent, Catherine held senior roles at Included Health, where she managed the firm’s consultant and broker relationships across the market, and at Willis Towers Watson, where she led large-employer relationships and strategic partnerships. She has seen firsthand how much of a client’s experience depends on which advisor team they happen to be assigned.
She knows what an account team can and cannot escalate, whether a constraint sits with the firm or the individual, and how a relationship starts to drift long before anyone calls it a problem.
Catherine holds a Bachelor's degree from Villanova University.
Catherine O’Neill | Principal
Melissa keeps a Docent engagement moving — across the client, the advisor and broker firms involved, and our own team. Even a well-run project touches several organizations at once, each on its own calendar. Melissa is the reason the steps stay in sequence and nothing quietly stalls.
At Docent she supports Strategic Fit preparation, coordinates the parties as a project progresses, and manages the materials and follow-through that keep each stage on track. Her work makes sure everyone involved knows what is being asked of them, by when, and what comes next.
Before joining Docent, Melissa led large-scale organizational change initiatives at Halliburton and KBR, including a global ERP transformation affecting more than 30,000 employees. That work required coordinating across functions, geographies, and vendors simultaneously, and it built the discipline she brings to Docent engagements.
Melissa is a graduate of Texas A&M University, where she earned a degree in Information and Operations Management with an emphasis in Management Information Systems and Supply Chain.