Holly Delany Cole is a former Program Director and current Advisor consultant with The LeadersTrust which, born out of the Flexible Leadership Awards at the Haas Jr. Fund, designs responsive, high-touch, long-term capacity strengthening collaborations with philanthropy that are based in trust to accelerate change. With her colleague Paula Morris, Holly helps lead the LeadersTrust’s Thrive Advisory Service – a consultancy focused on supporting foundations in design of capacity-strengthening.
Until June 2014, Holly was co-director of Community Resource Exchange (CRE), having been part of CRE’s team for 18 years including as staff consultant, director of consulting and deputy director for programs. Immediately before CRE, she was a freelance consultant for human services and grant-making organizations in Chicago and NYC and helped to formalize the National Funding Collaborative for Violence Prevention. Her work included program evaluation, program development, coalition-building, and proposal writing. Early in her career, Holly served as a program associate and program officer at the New York Community Trust, managing grant programs in youth services, human justice, employment, and aging.
Now a citizen of Oakland, California since 2016, Holly has increased her engagement with local decarceration efforts in recent years both as a community member and trustee of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Currently, Holly serves on the national board of Equity in the Center. She has also served as a long-term trustee of both the NY Foundation and PowerMyLearning. Holly has a BSW from Adelphi University and earned her masters at the School of Social Service Administration/University of Chicago. She is a social worker with a life-long interest in how practice in community informs social policy and is co-author of Working with Teen Parents – a Survey of Promising Approaches with Phyllis Smith Nickel (1985).