Donna Lencki Has A Few More Tricks Up Her Sleeves

After years of leading and founding successful health care and tech services companies, Donna Lencki's latest venture is bringing her into the world of manufacturing and fashion design. Her new company, SleekSleeves, provides clothing solutions for fashion-conscious people who wear medical devices.

Lencki started Manchester-based SleekSleeves in 2011 after being inspired by a stylish 80-year-old woman wearing an arm brace who complained nothing could make it look stylish. So Lencki went to work on a solution-Sleeves in a variety of materials and patterns to cover braces and PICC lines. What we're trying to do is make people look good when they may not be feeling great, Lencki says. Our tagline is look good, feel better.

When Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts went public with her battle with a rare blood disorder and Lencki saw her initial attempt to cover the chemo access port in her arm, Lencki mailed a SleekSleeve to the broadcaster. Roberts wore it on the air, and that eventually led to Lencki's team meeting with Roberts's designer in New York,--and to hundreds of inquiries.

Lencki says this business is completely different from her previous ones. It involves inventory and design and fabric, but it makes you feel so good, she says. The fledgling company uses six independent contractors. It has a variety of designs to choose from, but customers can also submit their own designs or logos.

Lencki started her career with Matthew Thornton Health Plan in the early '80s and helped it grow membership by 10,000 during the year she was with the company. She became CEO of Healthsource Company's NH operations in 1994 and helped the health plan company grow from a startup to a publicly traded company with almost $1 billion in revenues when it was sold to CIGNA Health Care in 1997.

Healthsource offered an opportunity to start from the ground up, Lencki says. It was one of the first companies where women had significant leadership roles in a company.

After taking a hiatus, Lencki co-founded Choicelinx Corporation in 1999, serving as its chairman and CEO. The company provides online tools to health care consumers to help them compare prices of providers.

She is now focused on SleekSleeves, which she says have numerous applications, from athletic performance and compression uses to covering injuries.

For more information, visit sleeksleeves.com.