{"692233":{"#nid":"692233","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Computing Alumnus Finds New Purpose Beyond the Boardroom ","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ERuss\u003C\/strong\u003E \u003Cstrong\u003EHolt\u003C\/strong\u003E (B.S. ICS 1983) has had two careers. In the first, he climbed the ranks at NCR and Dell, eventually leading a multi-billion-dollar enterprise systems division. In the second, he devoted himself to working for his church and a nonprofit ministry serving a local congregation and the city.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENow, in what he calls his \u201cfourth quarter,\u201d he and his wife plan to spend time with family, travel the world \u2014 and, of course, keep working, if only part-time, as the operations director for the nonprofit ministry connected to his church.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI don\u2019t think retirement is a biblical term,\u201d he said. \u201cA friend of mine referred to it as being repurposed. I suspect that as long as I have breath, I\u2019ll work within this calling to have an impact for good.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHolt says his computing education at Georgia Tech prepared him for every phase of his life.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI love the challenges of problem-solving and figuring out puzzles,\u201d Holt said, \u201chow to make things work and then debugging it to find out things that are wrong. They\u2019re just skills you carry through life.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EThe First Quarter: Education\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHolt began his college career at the U.S. Air Force Academy. While there, he met the woman who captured his heart. But because cadets weren\u2019t allowed to marry, he dropped out of the academy to marry his wife and enrolled at Georgia Tech in 1981.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBoth Holts worked hard, lived in married-student housing, and watched their pennies. That didn\u2019t keep them from making good memories, though.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe would watch Thursday night movies in the engineering building auditorium,\u201d Holt said. \u201cIt was only 25 cents to attend. That theater was a kind of respite for us, something we could afford.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHis other favorite places on campus were the library and the basement of the Information building, which housed the IT department for the then-called School of Information and Computer Science.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI was just thinking about how far things have come with AI now,\u201d he said. \u201cI actually had a punch card class.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EThe Second Quarter: Computing Industry\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHolt graduated from Georgia Tech with highest honors in September 1983 and accepted a position at NCR. He flourished there, rising from programmer to Vice President and General Manager of NCR\u2019s small-business computer division in just 12 years.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the late 1990s, NCR began divesting its computer business. After 14 years with NCR, Holt took a job at Dell in 1998, a role that came with two challenges. First, he was a software expert, yet Dell put him in charge of a hardware team. Second, he took a step down in rank for the job.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWithin six months, I became the vice president and general manager of their entry-level server division,\u201d he said. \u201cIn 2002, I became a member of the executive committee.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHis role expanded to vice president and general manager of the enterprise systems division, covering both servers and storage. The 2002 Network World annual list, \u002250 Most Powerful People in Networking,\u0022 included Holt and a Dell colleague, both co-vice presidents and general managers of Dell Computer Corporation\u2019s Enterprise Systems Group.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDuring this period, Dell significantly accelerated its push into high-density rack servers, networking switches, and enterprise Linux deployments. Rather than listing them individually, Network World grouped them by their collective impact on corporate infrastructure and named them among the final 50.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhile at NCR, Russ served as a Georgia Tech contact involved in NCR recruiting. He assumed a similar role after he settled into Dell. Holt was invited to serve on the College\u2019s Advisory Board in 2003 and remained on the board until 2015, serving as the board\u2019s chair for the last two of those years.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHis career was flourishing, but around 2002 he felt called to leave it all behind.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EThe Third Quarter: Ministry\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhen he was in his early 30s, Holt wrote a mission statement for his life as part of a broader drive to live with purpose.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EIt is my mission in life to experience sustaining joy by living an abundant life spiritually, socially, industrially, and financially.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHolt had been a devout Christian since childhood, and as he reached new career heights, he began to wonder whether it was time to give back by serving in ministry and living out his faith in practical ways.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThere came a point in my career when my wife asked me, \u2018When is enough enough?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWas I going to have a life that was all about me and what I could accomplish, or about giving back? We made the decision together to go into ministry.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhile at NCR, the couple had spent 14 years attending Gateway Church in Columbia, South Carolina, a Southern Baptist Church. In 2006, their pastor was building a leadership team. Twenty-three years after graduating from Tech and after a little over 8 years with Dell, Russ stepped into ministry. Russ Holt jumped in, not as a preacher, but to use his professional skills to help the congregation.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAfter three years with Gateway Church, he joined Crossroads Church, a non-denominational church that had founded a non-profit organization focused on reaching the city with the gospel \u2013 the good news of Christ. The non-profit encourages churches in the city to work together, to collaborate rather than compete, and to mobilize their people where they live, learn, work, and play, so they have the opportunity to love and serve their neighbors and colleagues and to share their faith with those who are far from God but close to them.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe became the church\u2019s executive pastor and served as the operations director for the non-profit. These roles were similar to those of a chief operating officer in industry. He helped select and implement management software as part of the church\u2019s operations. This included designing the system\u2019s workflows to improve processes within the church and the non-profit.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe software industry is pretty active on the church side as well,\u201d he said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECrossroads Church later connected with other churches across the U.S. and, together, founded a nonprofit network operating in more than 100 cities across the U.S. and Canada. Rather than serving in traditional pastoral roles, he leaned into the same strengths that had carried his corporate career: administration, finance, staffing, strategic planning, and process design.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor example, he built workflow diagrams for how the church should handle everything from guest follow-up to staff hand-offs, applying engineering discipline to congregational life. At the nonprofit, he held similar roles, including assisting other churches with their operations and strategic planning.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHis ordination came later, prompted not by a career milestone but by his youngest son\u0027s request that he officiate his wedding. After 15 years on staff, Russ began to sense another transition in his calling and purpose.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EThe Fourth Quarter: Service\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHolt describes his life in roughly twenty-year arcs. The first twenty-two years prepared him for adulthood; the next twenty-three were spent in the computing industry; and the following twenty were devoted to full-time ministry. Now 65, he is \u201cre-purposing\u201d to focus on family and the non-profit ministry.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe and his wife have three adult children, seven grandchildren, and have been married for forty-five years. This year, they are taking a river cruise down the Rhine, and next year, they\u0027re headed to the Cotswolds with Georgia Tech Alumni.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe is not stepping down from his mission, however. Holt continues to serve as an elder with Crossroads Church and, in his part-time role as operations director, will continue serving with the non-profit network, which now has 37 active city movements across North America.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a drastic shift,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was more of a, \u2018I want to drop the HR, the administration, the business financial side of running the church, and just dedicate half my time, 20 hours a week, to this nonprofit.\u2019\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAlthough he divides his life into quarters, Holt says there\u2019s been a strong \u003Cem\u003Ethread\u003C\/em\u003E running through it.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cMy identity is wrapped up in my faith in Christ,\u201d Holt said. \u201cI feel like my time at Tech and in industry was preparing me with skills I could apply to ministry \u2013 to helping the church and serving ministry leaders.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ERuss Holt (B.S. ICS 1983) has had two careers. In the first, he climbed the ranks at NCR and Dell, eventually leading a multi-billion-dollar enterprise systems division. In the second, he devoted himself to working for his church and a nonprofit ministry serving a local congregation and the city.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Russ Holt says his computing education at Georgia Tech prepared him for every phase of his life."}],"uid":"32045","created_gmt":"2026-09-03 12:09:09","changed_gmt":"2026-09-03 12:13:43","author":"Ben Snedeker","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2026-09-03T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2026-09-03T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"664620":{"id":"664620","type":"image","title":"ATL Skyline Reflected in Binary Bridge","body":null,"created":"1673381152","gmt_created":"2023-01-10 20:05:52","changed":"1673381152","gmt_changed":"2023-01-10 20:05:52","alt":"ATL skyline reflected in Binary Bridge","file":{"fid":"251459","name":"ATL Skyline Reflection-Binary Bridge.jpeg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ATL%20Skyline%20Reflection-Binary%20Bridge.jpeg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ATL%20Skyline%20Reflection-Binary%20Bridge.jpeg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":50853,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/ATL%20Skyline%20Reflection-Binary%20Bridge.jpeg?itok=V4IM1dF8"}},"681050":{"id":"681050","type":"image","title":"Georgia Tech Computing Alumnus Russ Holt","body":null,"created":"1788437451","gmt_created":"2026-09-03 12:10:51","changed":"1788437451","gmt_changed":"2026-09-03 12:10:51","alt":"Photo portrait of Georgia Tech Computing Alumnus Russ Holt","file":{"fid":"265401","name":"Russ-Holt-4-copy.jpeg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/09\/03\/Russ-Holt-4-copy.jpeg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/09\/03\/Russ-Holt-4-copy.jpeg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":84283,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2026\/09\/03\/Russ-Holt-4-copy.jpeg?itok=x6Qq8LUx"}}},"media_ids":["664620","681050"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"}],"categories":[{"id":"130","name":"Alumni"}],"keywords":[{"id":"596","name":"Alumni Association"},{"id":"10199","name":"Daily Digest"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAnn Claycombe\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECommunications Director\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech College of Computing\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003Eclaycombe@cc.gatech.edu\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}