Through her consultancy practice, Wise Solutions LLC, Holly also delivers international development, corporate social responsibility, public-private alliance, and business development expertise to corporations, foundations, and non-profits. Holly is also a Visiting Professor in the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Global Human Development Program where she teaches graduate-level courses on social enterprise, enterprise development, and innovation and also leads a Global Social Enterprise and Development Fellows Program with the McDonough School of Business. Additionally, she serves as a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a senior fellow at the Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability, and sits on the Council on Foreign Relations. She also served as a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government from 2006 to 2011 and also currently serves on the boards of FHI 360, GlobalGiving, LivingGoods, and Grassroots Business Partners. 

Previously, Holly spent 26 years in the Foreign Service with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), where she achieved the diplomatic rank of Minister Counselor. She is the founder and first Secretariat Director of the Global Development Alliance, USAID’s business model that forges strategic alliances between public and private partners in addressing international development issues. Under her leadership, 300 alliances were formed with $1.1 billion in USAID funding leveraging $3.8 billion in private resources for the world’s poor. In addition to overseas tours in Uganda, Kenya, Barbados, the Philippines, and China, Holly also served as USAID chair at the National Defense University, where she taught political science, environmental courses and published research on China. 

Holly is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Connecticut College and holds advanced degrees from Yale University and the National Defense University.