Show notes
AFH: Season 2, Episode 15
Featuring Holly Howard
About the Guest:
Holly Howard is the founder and CEO of Pyramid.Work, an AI-powered strategic growth engine for the entrepreneurial economy.
Pyramid is the culmination of Holly’s lifelong pursuit: integrating artist, scientist, healer, business builder, and teacher—and using that integration to create technology that helps people realize their own visions.
Holly’s journey began in 1996 at the Joffrey Ballet Training Program. At 18, she danced with the Ruth Page Ballet’s Nutcracker and joined the American Guild of Musical Artists.
In 1999, she entered Berklee College of Music to study Music Therapy and Bassoon, where she discovered neuroscience and neuroplasticity—that creativity can literally rewire the brain. She created an internship at the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function under Dr. Concetta Tomaino, longtime collaborator of Oliver Sacks. That experience taught her how to invent what doesn’t exist.
After three years as a Board-Certified Music Therapist in New York, Holly took a detour into Brooklyn’s restaurant scene—working at Marlow & Sons, where she was photographed by Roe Ethridge (now in ICA Boston and MOCA). She also recorded on bassoon with The Pierces. Later, she managed egg restaurant that she made profitable enough to offer PTO and health insurance to every employee in 2009. That work led to a congressional briefing for Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and influenced the Healthy Families Act.
During those years, Holly earned her premedical certificate at Columbia University while conducting orthopedic research at Lenox Hill Hospital. After publishing in the Journal of Arthroplasty, she chose not to pursue medicine and pivoted back to creativity.
In 2012, Holly founded Ask Holly How, her consulting practice. By 2014, her programs were sponsored by JPMorgan Chase and economic development corporations. She has since worked with over 1,000 small businesses, become a professor at Pratt Institute, joined the faculty at RISD, and launched the podcast Cultures Within Capitalism. Her work has been cited in the New York Times, The Cut, Fast Company, and Bustle.
In 2023, Holly completed her Master’s Certificate in Religions of the World at Harvard, integrating the spiritual and philosophical roots of everything she builds.
Through Pyramid, Holly is uniting all of these disciplines—art, science, service, and spirit—to help entrepreneurs build from their own foundations, not someone else’s framework.
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This podcast was produced by aurielle sayeh, filmed by @thetellychannel, and powered by @dameproducts.
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