Coming Full Circle
Harry Holt has always chosen the path that leads inside. That's been his guiding principle as a corporate executive and now as a regional managing director of INROADS , a nonprofit that has placed more than 20,000 talented minority youth in paid business internships. Harry Holt himself was one of those interns looking for a way inside.
Holt grew up in a gritty area of Pittsburgh better known for crime than for successful students. Despite the odds, he showed promise, and people noticed. He excelled in math and science and was chosen as A Better Chance scholar, a program that sends academically talented minority students to top independent and public high schools. Holt attended a residential program at Masconomet Regional High School outside Boston, where he recalls being "one of a dozen African American students in a school of 1,200."
It was at Brown University in 1981 that Holt got to know INROADS. He was placed in an internship with Calgon Corporation, the chemical company in Pittsburgh, and he returned there the two following summers. Leaving Brown in 1984 with a BS in chemical engineering, he was hired by Calgon as a process engineer.
As computers and other information technology swept through the corporate world, Holt realized his passion wasn't in engineering. He helped Calgon install an automated technology site and realized "I like this stuff a lot more than chemical engineering and production." His new passion led him to systems engineering at IBM, where he worked until entering Tuck in 1989.
After graduating from Tuck, Holt worked as a consultant at Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, then moved on to become vice president of training and development at BITHGROUP Technologies, founded and led by Robert Wallace T'84. It was in this position that the urgent importance of INROADS hit home.
For Holt, INROADS was more than just good works. "As Boomers leave the workforce and our economy continues to expand," he says, "there will be a critical demand for more business managers and technologists. And it is estimated that the number of minority professionals entering the workforce will need to double in the next five years." INROADS serves forward-looking businesses by identifying minority talent sooner. "There just aren't enough kids studying engineering and technology and even accounting," he says, "and I feel like I'm contributing to the future in a great way."
Holt had never lost touch with INROADS. During his pre- and post-Tuck careers, he had volunteered with the group as a mentor, workshop trainer, and facilitator. And in 2001, Holt came full circle and joined INROADS as a paid director responsible for a region extending from southern New Jersey through Virginia that generates about 400 internships each year. As with many nonprofits, the pay took some getting used to. "Every so often," he says, "I think I'm not getting enough money for what I do. But when I run into a student I worked with five or 10 years earlier who's doing well, I'm satisfied to remember that I had a part in that success.
"We're all fortunate," he says, "to have gotten a great education at Tuck, especially because they teach that success in business must include contributing to the world in which we live. It's one of the reasons I decided to go there."
