Board Bios

Joe Daly

 

Joe Daly

Board Chairman
Location: Washington, D.C.

Joe Daly is a Gallup senior partner and a member of the company’s management committee. Mr. Daly provides advisory services on entrepreneurship to governments and businesses worldwide, supporting them with research and data on the drivers of employment, job creation and business start-ups at the global, national, regional and local levels. He is a member of Gallup’s public release committee, a carefully staffed, historical team devoted to the protection of Gallup’s brand in public facing research. Before joining Gallup, Mr. Daly was a consultant at Accenture. 

With areas of expertise including change management, process improvement, project management and strategy, Mr. Daly joined the Lemonade Day National Board of Directors in 2016 and serves on the launch committee for the My Lemonade Day app. 

Gallup, a longtime partner with Lemonade Day, has studied the talents that distinguish successful entrepreneurs and has built an assessment that identifies individuals, such as high school students, with high entrepreneurial talent and helps leadership direct them to the right development and experiences to develop their talent. Mr. Daly’s knowledge in this area is a tremendous asset in his role on the Lemonade Day national board.

Mr. Daly works with global governments, academic institutions, nonprofits and corporations worldwide to help them solve the world’s most pressing problems using data from Gallup’s World Poll. Since 2005, the Gallup World Poll has collected opinions reflecting people’s well-being in more than 160 countries and regions. Organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations use these data to investigate and report on a range of issues, such as financial inclusion, food insecurity, well-being, human development and migration. 

Mr. Daly received his Master in Business Administration with a focus on international business from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Pennsylvania State University. He and his family reside in the Washington, D.C., area.

Renea

Renea Burns

Chair of Finance & Audit Committee
Location: Houston, Texas

As a Partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP, Renea Burns has more than 20 years of public and industry accounting experience serving international and national clients. For the past 13 years, Ms. Burns’ work has focused on the real estate industry. She specializes in audit professional services, and her clients include public and privately owned companies that are real estate investment trusts (REITs) that own, operate, and develop real estate, and/or invest in mortgage or mezzanine loans secured by real estate. She also has experience with multiple segments within the industry including retail centers, office buildings, industrial complexes, multifamily, single-family homes, student housing, and hotels. 

Ms. Burns is the Vice President for the National Association of Real Estate Companies and a speaker at their conferences. She has also presented on real estate trends for the Financial Executives Networking Group, the Houston Business Journal, and has been quoted in real estate articles for BisNow - Houston. Highly connected in her field, Ms. Burns is trusted by many professional firms and companies over the years including Blazek & Vetterling, Camden Property Trust, and Hines, and Weingarten Realty Investors. She was recently named by Deloitte & Touche the Real Estate Eminence Leader in their firm

Ms. Burns’ past volunteerism includes serving on the Board of Directors of New Hope Housing, a Houston non-profit affordable housing developer, where she spent majority of her tenure as Chair of the Finance Committee.

Ms. Burns hold a B.S. and M.S. in Accounting from the University of Houston – Clear Lake. As a native Houstonian, she and her husband raise their two sons in the Spring area fostering their own entrepreneurial spirit and athletic prowess.

Heath Butler

Heath Butler

Chair of Board Development & Governance Committee
Location: Houston, Texas

Heath Butler is venture investor, a serial entrepreneur and seasoned corporate executive with over 20 years of experience as a transformational leader with a proven ability to define a vision, execute strategy and deliver accelerated business impact.  At Mercury Fund, Heath invests in Work-Tech, Fin-Tech and Sports-Tech B2B Software and is also head of the Mercury Method, the firms proprietary platform, which helps portfolio companies achieve sustainable, long-term growth.  

Prior to joining Mercury, Heath co-founded Gestalt Theory Venture Partners, a venture studio for early-stage companies; held leadership roles as a fin-tech division president, and corporate development executive at Insperity (NYSE: NSP); led business development for EnergyWorkspace.com; co-founded a fin-tech startup; and, developed his foundational management skills at Travelers Group, United Parcel Service and his parents’ chain of retail stores in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Heath received an MBA in Marketing from Texas Southern University’s Jesse H. Jones School of Business and a B.S. in Finance from the University of New Orleans.  

Outside of Mercury, Heath is an active angel investor, mentors in innovation communities throughout Middle-America, hosts a quarterly “How to Start a Startup” session at The Ion and blogs @ StartupHeat. He is passionate about educating, empowering, and enabling entrepreneurs, and co-founded two organizations focused on closing the innovation, job, and wealth gaps in urban communities across the country – the Innovation Center for Urban Entrepreneurship (iCUE), a non-profit, designed to on-ramp people of color into the innovation ecosystem and Urban Capital Network (UCN), an investment platform designed to reduce the racial wealth gap. Heath also supports numerous non-profits through board service, including, as a Board Trustee for American Leadership Forum, as a Board Director for Lemonade Day and as a Board Director for DivInc.

Zach Ellis

Zach Ellis

Location: Houston, Texas

Zach Ellis, Jr. is the Founder and Managing Partner of South Loop Ventures, a pre-Seed/Seed stage venture capital fund for founders of color building companies with a nexus to the Greater Houston, Texas region. With more than 20 years of experience in venture acceleration, community building, and client advisory work, Mr. Ellis has specialized in working with partners and community members as the lead advisor for developing opportunities, spinouts, and startups. He has focused on the positive use of technology to transform people’s lives.

Mr. Ellis has held a variety of roles in venture capital, corporate innovation, and technology commercialization across a range of sectors, including biotech, cleantech, agtech and CPG. His previous experiences include Managing Director at Rev1 Ventures, corporate venture capital at PepsiCo; and commercializing university research at The Ohio State University and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

Mr. Ellis serves as an Advisory Board member of The BFM Fund, a seed-stage fund investing primarily in U.S. Black-led and innovative ventures. He began his career as an active-duty officer in the US Navy and holds a master’s degree in biotechnology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; an MBA from Pepperdine University and a bachelor’s degree from the US Naval Academy. Mr. Ellis lives in Houston, TX with his wife and four children.

Charlie Hamilton

Charlie Hamilton

Chair of Fundraising & Strategic Partnerships Committee
Location: Puerto Rico

Charlie Hamilton has enjoyed success across a diverse array of entrepreneurial endeavors. It has been his management expertise, his marketing ingenuity and his sheer tenacity that have been the common thread to his success. His lifelong passion for youth entrepreneurship led him to join the Lemonade Day National Board of Directors in 2013. He accepted the position of Chairman of the Board in 2016. Mr. Hamilton was born and raised in a farming and ranching family in Lubbock, Texas, and opened his first business, a watermelon stand, when he was 10 years old.

He co-founded Crestmoor Capital Partners and has strategically assembled seasoned experts to provide specialty merchant banking and advisory services to banks. Crestmoor Capital Partners specializes in partnering with banks on problem loans and asset repositioning programs. Mr. Hamilton is also the managing partner of two residential land development companies in Texas. As a developer, he consistently works to develop close-knit neighborhoods built and designed to provide a sense of community and a treasured place to live.

Mr. Hamilton has served on the advisory board for the Rawls College of Business and is the past chairman of the Chief Executive Roundtable for Texas Tech University. In addition, he is a member of YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization). He currently resides in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with his wife, Kate, and their two boys, Conrad and Carson.

Hank

Hank Holmes

Location: Houston, Texas

Hank Holmes serves as Chief Banking Officer of Cadence Bank and is responsible for identifying and implementing effective strategies to support the company’s long-term growth and development. Since joining Cadence in 2011, Mr. Holmes has helped build the company’s relationship-focused lending teams across the Southeast and Texas. He oversees commercial & industrial, corporate & institutional banking, commercial real estate, energy, specialized industries, and treasury management. As a member of Cadence Bank’s executive leadership team, senior management and Senior Loan Committee, he is integrally involved in the company’s M&A activity, business development, and credit decisions.
 
Mr. Holmes began his career at Amegy Bank in its Commercial Real Estate department, later transitioning to Private Wealth Banking, where the group outperformed industry standards with high profitability and minimal loan loss. He assumed leadership of the bank’s Special Assets group in 2009, effectively mitigating risk in criticized assets and implementing policies to meet regulatory and other audit requirements.
 
Mr. Holmes earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Mississippi, majoring in managerial finance. Active in the community, he serves on the board of directors for the University of Mississippi’s School of Banking and Finance, BakerRipley, and St. Francis Episcopal Day School. Mr. Holmes is a member of the Young Presidents Organization and St. Luke’s United Methodist Church.

Lisa Holthouse

Lisa Holthouse

Director Emeritus

Lemonade Day Co-Founder
Location: Houston, Texas

Lisa Holthouse, a lifelong Houstonian, is the Executive Publisher of Houston CityBook, as well as an author, an artist and a noted philanthropist. Along with her husband, Michael, she helps lead her family’s Holthouse Foundation for Kids, a platform to serve at-risk youth by supporting programs designed to help them achieve success in their lives through life skills, character education and experiential entrepreneurism. 

Mrs. Holthouse has served on a variety of boards, including IDEA Public Schools, Healthcorps, Sonima Foundation, AIDS Foundation Houston, National Charity League Houston, After-School All-Stars and Lemonade Day. She has chaired fundraisers for a wide array of deserving nonprofits, including Children’s Museum Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, AIDS Foundation, Lemonade Day, The Giving Back Fund, Hermann Park Conservancy and more. During Super Bowl 2017, Mr. and Mrs. Holthouse chaired a celebrity fundraiser that raised more than $1 million for charity in a single night.

She has been honored by organizations for her community service, such as Houston Achievement Place, KIPP Academy, H Magazine as one of “25 Beautiful Houstonians,” Houston Social Book as a “Sweetheart,” and Crohn’s and Colitis as one of their “Women of Distinction.” She is also a Hall of Fame three-time honoree by March of Dimes as one of Houston’s “Best Dressed.”

Mrs. Holthouse holds a bachelor’s degree in English with continued studies at the University of Houston and other art institutions in foreign languages and visual arts. Sales of her 2013 children’s book It All Started With a Turtle, which chronicles the real-life teaching moments of how Lemonade Day began, were raised to benefit the organization and its growth.

Michael Holthouse

Michael Holthouse

Lemonade Day Co-Founder
Location: Houston, Texas

Michael is best known in the business world as Founder and President of Paranet, Inc., a computer network services company. As an Inc. Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year and a two-time “Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Company” winner, Michael grew Paranet in six years to 27 offices with 1,600 employees and revenues in excess of $120 million and ultimately sold the company to Sprint in 1997. 

Since then, he has focused on investments, philanthropy and a variety of business interests. His investment company, Holthouse Interests, manages a variety of investments, including those in early-stage technology companies, with the intent to maximize growth and return on invested capital. His family foundation, The Holthouse Foundation for Kids, focuses proactively on the needs of Houston’s most at-risk youth. 

Community involvement is an enormous part of Michael’s life, and he has served on a variety of boards, including TXRX Labs, Junior Achievement, Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Children’s Museum Houston and Boy Scouts of America. Other organizations with which he has involved himself include YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization), Leadership Houston, American Leadership Forum and the Center for Houston’s Future. 

His philanthropic venture is called Prepared 4 Life, which prepares middle school youth for life through fun, proactive and experiential programs infused with life skills, character education and entrepreneurship. Its flagship program is Lemonade Day.   

The most treasured part of Michael’s life is spending time with his wife, Lisa, and their children.

Rachel

Rachel Davison Humphries

Location: Sarasota, Florida

Rachel Davison Humphries is the Senior Director of Civic Learning Initiatives at the Bill of Rights Institute (BRI), where she leads the outreach initiatives, partnership development and curation, new programs and innovation, branding strategy, and products, and directs the student programs, including the national civic engagement contest, My Impact Challenge. Rachel and her team generate and cultivate scores of partnerships annually, growing BRI’s brand and supporting 75,000+ educators.

With nearly 20 years of experience, Rachel has a long track record in the field of education and curriculum development with a deep understanding of the holistic nature of the learner. Prior to joining BRI in 2016, Rachel worked for almost a decade as a Master Socratic Educator, mentor, and trainer in middle, high school, and university environments and continues to consult on a variety of educational projects. She has designed programming and training for Socratic, Montessori, classical, blended, expeditionary, and a variety of radically agency-driven learning environments. Rachel was also the first employee hired by Jeff and Laura Sandefer to start Acton Academy.
 
Rachel earned her B.A. in Liberal Arts from the Great Books program at St. Johns College in Annapolis, Maryland, her teaching diploma in Adolescent Education from the Association Montessori Internationale, and her M.A. in Learning, Design, & Technology at Georgetown University. She is very active in the community, serving on boards of schools and non-profits. Having just recently moved, Rachel and her family now call Sarasota, Florida their home.

Jessie Jones

Jessie Jones

Location: Newbury, Ohio

Jessie Jones is Director of Strategic Partnerships at Young Entrepreneur Institute (YEI) a national organization with a goal for every child to understand and experience entrepreneurship. YEI provides consulting, professional development and access to content for K-12 educators and administrators in and beyond the classroom. In her role, Ms. Jones cultivates and nurtures collaborative relationships with organizations – such as Lemonade Day - and individuals serving youth across the nation; develops and curates entrepreneurship education content; leads mindset building workshops for students and educators. 

Ms. Jones served as the regional director of Lemonade Day Northeast Ohio for eight years, receiving the Lemonade Day National President’s Award in 2019. Her curriculum development credits include a lemonade-stand based activity guide for Macmillan publishing to accompany Brian Weisfeld’s Startup Squad; the YEI Pitch Challenge Toolkit; an alternative pathway to graduation via entrepreneurship; and a range of interactive workshops to build an entrepreneurial mindset in youth and adults. She speaks and teaches nationally about the importance of developing an entrepreneurial mindset and transforming educational experiences for youth. 

In addition to her work at YEI, Ms. Jones consults and coaches organizations and leaders excited about transforming education, and serves on the board of Hershey Montessori School, a land-based day- and boarding school in Ohio. She earned a B.A. in English from Guilford College and a M.S. in Geodetic Science from The Ohio State University. Prior to joining YEI, she worked as a senior technical analyst in public and private sectors. Her entrepreneurial journey began in middle school and continues today with family businesses.

Keith Kreuer

Keith Kreuer

Chair of Programming Committee
Location: Houston, Texas

As a member of the Lemonade Day National Board of Directors, Keith Kreuer provides over 30 years of experience in starting and building innovative, customer-oriented information technology companies. As Principal with RedHouse Associates, Keith specializes in helping early-stage companies create their business plans, define product roadmaps, build processes that scale and secure angel investments. In his role as a co-founder and investor, Keith has assisted start-up teams in achieving a dozen positive exits, with returns of over $1.2 billion in value to their founders and investors. 

Mr. Kreuer has mentored executives and entrepreneurs throughout the years and shares his valuable advice with the organization as well as its fledgling entrepreneurs. He joined the board in 2020 and is a member of its My Lemonade Day App Technology Committee; he provides valuable insights on information technology and entrepreneurship.

Mr. Kreuer is an active angel investor in the Houston and Austin start-up ecosystems and has participated in over 90 private investments. He is a mentor and advisor to the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, Capital Factory and Station Houston, as well as the Rice University OwlSpark and University of Houston Red Labs Accelerator programs.

He was an early investor in Idera and served on the board of directors until it was acquired by TA Associates in 2014. Keith co-founded PentaSafe in 1997 and served as its Director of World-Wide Services & Support until its acquisition by NetIQ in 2002. Prior to that, Keith was Co-Founder and President of Penta, Inc., a Houston-based software consulting firm that was acquired by VeriCenter in February 2000. 

Earlier in his career, Mr. Kreuer served in various positions, such as Director of Operations for Generator Systems, Consulting Manager for Ernst & Young and Software Development Project Manager for Exxon, U.S.A. 

Mr. Kreuer’s volunteerism and community involvement also includes current service on the board of directors for Goodwill Industries Houston and past involvement on the Target Hunger Board of Directors.

Mr. Kreuer is a graduate of Iowa State University, where he received a B.S. in Business Administration with an emphasis in computer science.

On any given weekend, you can find Keith either wakeboarding and surfing on Lake Conroe near Houston, or sailing along the Gulf Coast on his family’s coastal cruiser.

Anaye

Anaye Milligan

Location: Houston, Texas

Anaye Milligan is a veteran marketing leader whose strengths lie in leading transformational change through innovation and collaboration. He has worked for media organizations like the New York Times, professional services firms like Insperity, and in healthcare for organizations like Houston Methodist.
 
With over 15 years of proven results in brand building, demand generation, digital strategy, and product marketing, Mr. Milligan has earned a reputation for successfully leading teams to solve problems and seize growth opportunities.
 
Mr. Milligan earned his MBA from the University of Texas at Austin and holds an MFA in filmmaking from Boston University. He is a fitness enthusiast who lives in Houston, TX with his wife and children.

Amanda

Amanda Kathryn Pascale

Location: Lake Nona, Florida

Amanda guides small business owners seeking to create more meaning and profit. She equips leaders with new perspectives on areas to improve, designs innovative strategies, and implements growth tactics that activate a culture to reinvent, elevate, and grow people, performance, and profit. As a serial social entrepreneur, keynote speaker, growth executive, consultant, and trainer for three decades and counting, Amanda scales disruptive models as a provocative change agent. She served as the lead strategy and innovation executive for a dozen organizations, accompanying them throughout all business phases: start-up, growth, repositioning, and expansion. Having worked on Main Street, K Street, and Wall Street, Amanda has designed strategies for dozens of private and public sector teams; coached hundreds of executives across the country; trained thousands of leaders through small group events; and built ten mastermind communities with decades of growth.

Amanda is the co-founder of three regenerative organizations designed to create space for changemakers to have courageous conversations and take bold action in collectively driving systemic shifts in civil society through Living Room Conversations, in the public sector through the Bridge Alliance, and the private sector through the Institute for Corporate Transformation. 

Currently, Amanda is the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School Principal Executive Education Director for the global Economics of Mutuality program and a catalyst for a growing global network of world-class consultants working together to accelerate the transition to stakeholder-centric business models as co-creator and co-facilitator of the consultant certification program for Conscious Capitalism, Inc. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Lemonade Day, a national nonprofit teaching kids the power of entrepreneurship; as an Association Leader for Leadership Orlando supporting the growth of Florida businesses and the state’s economic development; and as an advisory board member of Conscious Nona, a collective activating conscious self-awareness to intentionally create a sustainable, high-frequency community in her neighborhood of Lake Nona, Florida.

Andy

Andy Main

Advisory Board
Location: Golden, Colorado

Andy Main is the former Global Chief Executive Officer for Ogilvy, and is the former Global CEO of Deloitte Digital.

Throughout his career, Mr. Main has grown the value of Fortune 500 companies through the combined power of creativity, technology, business value, and experience innovation. He transformed Ogilvy into the world’s leading creative agency in only two years, well ahead of market expectations. Prior to joining Ogilvy, Mr. Main led Deloitte Digital and scaled it into a multi-billion global business. He's an entrepreneur and reshaped the industry by making the first move by a consulting firm to compete in the creative services market.

Mr. Main is one of the industry's most highly regarded executives, featuring in Adweek’s Top 100 Leaders in Marketing, Media, and Technology. He has also been named as one of the world’s Top 25 consultants by Consulting Magazine.

Originally from Scotland, Mr. Main has lived in the USA for over 30 years, most of it in Denver where he and his family currently reside. He recently became a USA citizen, so the question is "What took him so long?". He doesn’t know. He serves on the board of the Keystone Science School, which provides camp-based STEM education for kids in the great outdoors, and is a patron of the Denver Art Museum. He loves to cycle, ski, and hike the Colorado mountains. If you wish to share in his pain, then please follow his lifetime passion of being a supporter of his hometown football team, the mighty Raith Rovers.

Paul

Paul B. Murphy, Jr.

Advisory Board
Location: Houston, Texas

Paul Murphy has served at Cadence and its predecessors since December 2009. Cadence is a bank holding company headquartered in Houston, TX that is traded on the NYSE under the ticker symbol CADE.

Previously, Mr. Murphy spent 20 years at Amegy Bank of Texas, helping to steer that institution from $75 million in assets and a single location to assets of $11 billion and 85 banking centers at the time of his departure as the Chief Executive Officer and a Director in 2009.

Mr. Murphy is an advocate of the community and has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. Currently, he is on the boards of Oceaneering International, Inc., Natural Resource Partners, Hope and Healing Center and Institute, Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the City of Houston Complete Communities Advisory Board. He also is active in YPO Gold Houston.

Mr. Murphy earned a bachelor's degree in banking and finance from Mississippi State University and his MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Nicole Cassier-Mason

Nicole Cassier-Mason

CEO, Lemonade Day National
Location: Houston, Texas

Nicole Cassier-Mason has nearly 20 years of non-profit organization experience providing leadership in operations, fundraising, capital campaigns, marketing and community relations, cultivating and stewarding business partnerships, and implementing strategic initiatives.

Ms. Cassier-Mason most recently served as Vice President, Fund Development/Communications of New Hope Housing, Inc. She was an officer of the company and a key member of the Executive Management Team, which included cultivating a dynamic relationship with the Board of Directors. New Hope Housing provides life-stabilizing, affordable, permanent housing with support services for Houston’s most vulnerable citizens who live on very limited incomes. Cassier-Mason previously worked as the Development Director at The Heritage Society in Houston, and as an Event Coordinator at the City of Houston Mayor’s Office of Special Events.

She graduated with Honors in May 2003 from the Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee with a double major in History and Religious Studies and a double minor in Political Science and Marketing. As a competitive athlete, she also played soccer and ran track. She is a Business/Civic Leadership Forum graduate from the Center for Houston’s Future 2019 class. She also is a 2020 Executive Seminar Graduate from The Buckley School of Public Speaking. She has held a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) certification since 2014.

Ms. Cassier-Mason is a native Houstonian. She and her husband are parents to one rescued fur-baby, Ferris. They love spending time outdoors and traveling, camping, hiking, bike-riding, going to the beach and snow skiing.