Meet the Team

A. Bart Holaday
Founder and Chairman

Bart is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), former Air Force officer, federal civil servant, venture capitalist and philanthropist.

As a cadet at the USAFA, he was a varsity athlete, class president, Cadet Wing Commander and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University.

In more than 20 years as a venture capitalist, he was an industry leader ultimately serving as an officer and board member of the National Venture Capital Association. He co-chaired an industry task force that established the first portfolio valuation and performance measurements standards for private equity. In these positions he advanced his vision of building the American economy based on innovation, entrepreneurship, investment and hard work.

As a philanthropist, he founded the Dakota Foundation, a foundation dedicated to funding entrepreneurial, non-profit organizations that help people help themselves in achieving greater economic self-sufficiency.

Janet L. Holaday
Secretary-Treasurer

Janet Holaday received a bachelor's degree in French and Spanish from Colorado College and a master's degree in accounting and business law from the University of North Dakota.

She became a CPA and joined the accounting firm founded by her father, Sidney E. Holaday. It was the first father-daughter CPA firm in North Dakota. She has provided both professional and pro bono accounting and auditing services for numerous non-profit organizations in central North Dakota.

Janet was a chapter and state officer of the North Dakota State Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution for over 20 years. She is currently state registrar and genealogical consultant for three other hereditary societies and is active in organizations supporting higher education, historical preservation and genealogical research.

Andrew J. Sellers
Vice-Chairman

Andrew Sellers grew up in Colorado Springs and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy as the valedictorian of his class. He attended the University of Oxford as a Holaday Scholar and a Truman Scholar, earning both a Master's degree and a PhD.

Andrew served as a U.S. Air Force Senior Cyberspace Operations Officer with expertise in large-scale heterogeneous network design, deep-web data extraction, and data theory who led enterprise network modernization and design efforts for the Air Force and large Dept. of Defense initiatives. He concluded his Air Force service as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is an Iraq war veteran.

Andrew has since held leadership roles in data and technology companies. He currently works as a technologist at Confluent.

Judy Villella
accounting & LOan Manager

Judy was born and raised in Albuquerque, NM. She attended University of New Mexico where she played basketball and earned her bachelor's degree in Accounting. Upon graduation, she earned her CPA and would spend the next 8 years working in public accounting in New Mexico and North Carolina. Her primary focus was performing financial statement audits for private, government, and not-for-profit clients.

Judy currently resides in Colorado Springs and is enjoying discovering all that Colorado has to offer with her husband and three young daughters.

Kelsey Nolan
President & CEO

Kelsey graduated Cum Laude with a B.A. in Economics and Art History from Scripps College, and holds a Philanthropy Professional Certificate from Stanford.

As the President & CEO of The Dakota Foundation, she pursues program-related investments that get the highest social return out of programs fostering self-sufficiency. Kelsey comes with a background in launching venture-backed start-ups, including social enterprise and B-corp companies. She serves on the boards for Advance and the Legacy Institute, nonprofits focused on homelessness, education and community development throughout the front range of Colorado. Living in Denver, she is an avid skier, hiker, traveler and Broncos enthusiast.

Catharine M. Holaday
Vice-Chairman Emeritus

Cathy grew up in Colorado and loves outdoor sports. She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1973 and began a business career.

When, in 1986, her third child was born, she left the work world to raise her children and become actively involved in the community as a volunteer.

She currently serves on the board of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and is a board member of the Colorado Springs Philharmonic. Widowed twice, she married Bart Holaday in 2013.

T. Justin Bronder

Justin Bronder is a Distinguished Graduate from the US Air Force Academy, where he had the good fortune to earn the first Alberta Bart Holaday Scholarship to attend Exeter College, Oxford.

After completing his DPhil in Astrophysics, Justin went on to Air Force assignments at the Air Force Research Laboratory and deployed to the Middle East to support rapid acquisition programs for US Special Operations Command. In 2010, Justin graduated from the USAF Test Pilot School and then led test programs on the CV-22 and various C-130 aircraft while being named Air Force Materiel Command’s Flight Test Engineer of the Year in 2013.

Selected for the Olmsted Scholarship that same year, Justin and his family moved to Poland, where he is currently studying at Adam Mickiewicz University. Justin has been an active volunteer in science education outreach programs for both children and adults throughout his career.

Erin A. Finger

Erin is a financial crimes investigations specialist, and currently leads an Anti Money Laundering/Counter Terror Finance investigations team at Bank of America in Charlotte, NC. She has previously held investigative positions in AML, internal investigations, and mortgage and loan fraud. Prior to her career in private sector financial crimes investigations, Erin served in the US Air Force as a Special Agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, leading federal criminal investigations across the globe.

Originally from Louisville, KY, Erin is a Distinguished Graduate from the US Air Force Academy with a major in Political Science and a minor in Spanish. She attended Exeter College at the University of Oxford as a Holaday Scholar, earning an M.Phil. in Comparative Government, with a focus on post-civil war democratization in Central America.

Erin began practicing yoga while deployed in Kandahar, Afghanistan and earned her 200-hour yoga teacher training certification in 2016. She currently teaches at NoDa Yoga in Charlotte, NC and also serves as an Ambassador and yoga teacher for the Veterans Yoga Project, teaching veterans and specializing in trauma-informed yoga. Erin has also played the cello since the age of four and still enjoys going to concerts and playing chamber music with friends. She and her husband, Patrick, are avid travelers and enjoy exploring the world together whenever possible!

Katrina Hancock

Katrina Hancock is a Strategy and Fundraising Consultant working with a number of UK based charities which are aiming to set up or develop their strategic philanthropic initiatives. Clients include those in the Higher Education, Healthcare, and Children's Services sectors and her work includes mentoring, capacity building, and strategy development and implementation.

She was previously the Director of Development and Alumni Relations at Exeter College, Oxford, Oxford where she raised over £50m which has funded the creation of a portfolio of student scholarships and bursaries, an endowment for teaching and research posts, and the creation of the new Cohen Quadrangle which provides 90 student study bedroom and 21st century teaching facilities.

Under her leadership there, the undergraduate alumni participation rate rose to 49% in 2014, the 700th Anniversary Year - the highest globally in Higher Education outside the USA.

She is a strategic thinker and leader who is passionate about enabling individuals and organizations to partner together and transform the lives of others through effective philanthropy.

She serves as a trustee and Board Member of her local branch of the UK initiative, Street Pastors, and theological college (seminary), Wycliffe Hall.

Brett C. Holaday

Brett Holaday comes to us with a background in Real Estate and event planning. She studied US History at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is a member of the Delta Gamma Sorority. She also has her private pilot’s license, and enjoys flying when she has the time!

Brett has traveled to 22 countries and is now happily settled in Sedona. She grew up in a family where giving was always a priority, no matter what level.

She has been a Big Sister in the Big Brother/Big Sister program, is a volunteer docent at the Dallas Arboretum, and sits on the Host Committee for the Nexus Foundation in Dallas, Texas.

SAM POTTER

Sam Potter, from Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, is pursuing a JD at Stanford Law School. She graduated from the United States Air Force Academy with a bachelor's degree in English literature and legal studies and minored in Russian. She also earned an MPhil in international relations from the University of Oxford as a Holaday Scholar.

Sam aspires to promote the safe and equitable use of outer space. She has interned with the General Counsel of the Air Force, NASA's International and Space Law Practice Group, and served as an advisor with the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Previously, Sam was an Acquisition Officer in the USAF, managing the latest command and control platform to provide situational awareness to 35,000 military police as well as overseeing a $15M deployment.

Sam will continue her dedication to service as a Judge Advocate where she hopes to influence outer space policy and law in the U.S. Air and Space Forces.

Peter B. Villella

Peter B. Villella was born and raised in Albuquerque, NM. He has a BA with Distinction in History and Spanish from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in History from UCLA. He currently lives in Colorado Springs, CO, where he is Associate Professor of History at the United States Air Force Academy.

Villella's research and teaching expertise pertains to Latin American and world history. He is the author and co-editor of several works pertaining to Mexican history, including Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and History of the Chichimeca Nation (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019). He is also a contributing editor to the Handbook of Latin American Studies, a project of the Library of Congress, and is an executive officer with the American Society for Ethnohistory.

Before and during his academic career, Villella traveled, lived, and worked in many countries, including Mexico, Spain, and the UK. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, he volunteered with children lacking educational opportunities in Ecuador and children living on the streets in Brazil. In the US, in addition to his work with the Dakota Foundation, he has been involved with local chapters of the ALS Association. He enjoys hiking and snowboarding, ACC basketball, playing the piano, and spending time with his wife, Judy, and three daughters.