Holly serves as a Managing Director of the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, a global venture philanthropy firm supporting early-stage, high-impact social enterprises. She plays a lead role in sourcing new investments and working with the leadership of those organizations as an operating partner and board member as they grow to build capacity and achieve their maximum impact. As a member of the Foundation’s senior leadership team, based in Dallas, Texas, Holly plays a lead role in increasing the Foundation’s presence, portfolio investments, and donor partnerships in Texas and the Southwest region. Holly currently serves on the board of grantee Child Poverty Action Lab.
Holly has 25 years of public policy and leadership experience. As Executive Director of the George W. Bush Institute, Holly led the team in developing and implementing major policy and programmatic initiatives on key issues of national and global importance. She oversaw the organization’s strategy on leadership development, with four leadership programs graduating over 1,000 alumni to date from around the world. Domestically, she led their efforts to push for comprehensive immigration reform and developed key alliances and partnerships in support of that effort. Globally, she shepherded the Bush Institute’s public-private partnership on global health that scaled up screening and treatment for cervical cancer for millions of women in sub-Saharan Africa.
She is a veteran of the White House, U.S. Department of Education, and Capitol Hill, where she developed her expertise in education policy. She served on the White House Domestic Policy Council staff and then as Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant Secretary for Legislation and Congressional Affairs at the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to that, she worked for two United States Senators on domestic policy issues. She has also consulted on education and workforce issues with major foundations, companies, non-profits, and policymakers.
Holly also served as a Resident Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, a Pahara Institute Fellow, and an Aspen Global Leadership Network member. She serves on the boards of the Gates Policy Initiative, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, and the Dallas Assembly, and is an alumnus of the Texas Lyceum. She is a graduate of Northwestern University.