Sharon Holland is the co-founder and volunteer Executive Director for the Partnership for Aurora-Richland Township Progress.  She also serves as the chair of the Tourism Development Committee for the Aurora Leadership Council, and volunteer communications coordinator for the Town of Aurora. 

 

Ms. Holland is originally from San Diego, California, where she grew up in a Navy family.  She began her Federal government career at the National Naval Medical Center (now Walter Reed National Military Medical Center) in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1980.  Since 1982, she has been employed by the Department of Defense at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the nation’s only Federal health sciences university, where she serves as the Deputy Vice President for External Affairs and Director of Alumni Affairs.  From 1998-1999, Ms. Holland was an Elmer D. Ball Congressional Fellow in the office of Senator Ernest “Fritz” Hollings (SC), with a concentration on military and veterans’ health care matters. Ms. Holland previously worked as a reporter and photographer for several small-town newspapers, including the Clay Today (Clay Co., Fla.), Brunswick Citizen (Brunswick, Md.), and the Dixon Tribune (Dixon, Calif.), with reporting responsibilities for city government, school board, parks and recreation, and police and fire departments.  While in Dixon, she also served as a Commissioner for the City of Dixon Parks and Recreation Commission. Since 2004, she has served as the volunteer public information officer for the Fraternal Order of Leatherheads Society, an international firefighter 501(c)(3) organization.  In 2020, she joined the non-profit, A Soldier’s Journey Home, which builds homes for severely injured veterans, as its volunteer communications director.