ABOUT HOLLEY ATKINSON
A native New Yorker, Holley launched her consultancy Making Food Work in 2009. She supports local food + tech initiatives on a wide range of issues and challenges with digital & social media strategy and coaching, product development, marketing and other advisory services. She is passionate about local food systems, social media, and information technology. Ongoing engagements include start-ups and established businesses in food distribution, advocacy, and hospitality, as well as tech and the arts. Individual private clients have included chefs, scientists, academics, artists, journalists, progressive political candidates and activists.
Holley co-founded the Food+Tech Meetup in early 2010 and the Slow Money NYC Meetup later that same (pivotal!) year. She has been a leader of several non-profit organizations including Slow Food NYC (she became a Slow Food member in 2003, served on the NYC board from 2010-2021, and co-chaired Communications), Chefs for the Marcellus (food & beverage professionals who mobilized in 2011 to ban fracking in New York State, achieved in 2014), and the Culinary Historians of New York, where she served until 2018 as Vice Chair of the board of directors. In 2008 Holley helped to organize Brooklyn's most successful Obama for America fundraiser. In January 2013 the Beecher's Flagship Foundation awarded her their Pure Food Hero Prize; in January 2014 she was invited to the Obama White House to participate live in the State of the Union Social. Since 2017 she has been a mentor in several food & ag innovation accelerator programs (Food-X and FoodFutureCo), and a social media coach and mentor to startups in the FoodBytes! Pitch by Rabobank food & ag innovation discovery platform.
Holley has over 30 years’ experience producing and managing content and technology in the interactive services sector, primarily in entrepreneurial settings. Until 2010 Holley was EVP at Triton Digital Media, the leading provider of digital applications, services, and content to major-market commercial radio stations. Her editorial and production teams published daily news in 12 music genres syndicated to over 500 station websites. In 2007, Triton acquired MJI Interactive, a leading independent radio syndicator. Holley had joined MJI Broadcasting in 1996 to launch MJI's interactive unit as part of a broad and ambitious new business initiative to develop Internet-based services for broadcast radio affiliates (MJI was acquired by Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks in 1999). In addition to content, she also worked on R&D and delivery of MJI's innovative web-based tools for radio stations, including content management systems, e-mail marketing, podcasting, text messaging and social media.
Prior to MJI/Triton, Holley worked on several pioneering pre-Internet digital publishing ventures in "Silicon Alley" including the first edition of TV Guide Online. She ran the U.S. subsidiary of CTL Telematique, a pioneering French software start-up bringing its interactive tools to the nascent U.S. online market, where her team developed early interactive versions of USA TODAY and the New York B2B Yellow Pages. Before transitioning to the digital media sector, Holley was Administrator of New York University's prestigious graduate program at the Institute of French Studies. Her first job in food was as a cheesemonger at Lamarca Cheese Shop in Gramercy Park, unless you count cooking for families while working as an "au pair" in Paris and East Hampton.
Holley holds a dual B.A. in History and French from Brown University. She has also completed the Culinary Techniques and Advanced Culinary Techniques courses at the International Culinary Center (fka French Culinary Institute), and attended Farm Camp at Flying Pigs Farm, a boot camp for professionals working in food service, food media, and farm and food advocacy.