DeVone Holt combines nearly 30 years of experience as an institutional brand manager, culture creator, strategic communicator and people convener. In 2024, he was named president and CEO of the Muhammad Ali Center, a 96,000-square-foot cultural center that showcases Ali’s life, legacy and service to others.
DeVone previously served as the Chief External Affairs Officer at Goodwill Industries of Kentucky, where he helped the nonprofit turn a 20-acre inner-city brownfield site into a $120 million Opportunity Campus in Louisville’s most underserved community. He also served as superintendent of Kentucky’s very first high school for adults, which Goodwill opened in 2022 after a multi-year legislative lobbying and fundraising campaign led by DeVone. Before that, he served as national director of customer engagement for ResCare Workforce Services and as special assistant to the superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools. His efforts were recognized in a community study conducted by Leadership Louisville, which identified him as one of the city’s most “connected” citizens who has found success at “getting things done” as a “trusted leader.” As an economic development professional, his work helped create approximately $400 million in new business investments and more than 1,000 new jobs for inner-city residents. He produced these unprecedented results by managing the inner-city business expansion and attraction projects for Louisville for seven years before founding the Urban Insight Agency, which served as a consulting firm that helped companies maximize investments in urban markets. In 2003, his best-selling book “Hip-Hop Slop: The Impact of a Dysfunctional Culture” was published and led him to the lecture circuit.
