Pitt Business: Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business & College of Business Administration

Press Release

March 23, 2006

Katz Alumna Honored with President’s Volunteer Service Award

Kristen Holloway founded Operation Troop Appreciation to provide care packages to servicemen and women deployed overseas

PITTSBURGH—While visiting Wheeling, W.V. March 22, President George W. Bush presented Kristen Holloway, a 2005 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh’s Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, with the President’s Volunteer Service Award for her efforts to care for deployed servicemen and women through Operation Troop Appreciation (OTA).

The President’s Volunteer Service Award is issued by the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation on behalf of the President of the United States to recognize the best in American spirit and to encourage all Americans to improve their communities through volunteer service and civic participation. Holloway is one of more than 480 individual, family, and group award recipients from across America who have demonstrated outstanding volunteer service and civic participation over a 12-month period.

“OTA feels that support of our troops should extend beyond political alignment or personal feelings about U.S. involvement in the war. Instead, OTA strives to ease the burdens of deployment for those individuals who have answered the call of duty,” says Holloway.
 
Holloway founded OTA in 2004 while a student at the Katz School. Her initial intent was to provide Under Armorâ t-shirts to members of a local Pennsylvania National Guard platoon deployed in Iraq. The outpouring of support was so overwhelming that Holloway was able to provide t-shirts to an entire company. With the help of nearly 50 volunteers, including some from Katz, Holloway and OTA have provided more than 10,000 care packages to soldiers in the Middle East and Africa over the past 20 months. The care packages include such things as Under Armorâ t-shirts to keep the troops cool and dry, phone and greeting cards to help soldiers communicate with loved ones at home, as well as musical instruments, sports equipment, DVDs, movie popcorn and candy, and special request items.

In addition to her responsibilities as founder and president of OTA, Holloway is an employee of PPG Industries, Inc.

In July 2004, OTA was established as a Pennsylvania non-profit corporation with Federal 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. For more information on OTA or to make a donation to the organization through PayPal, visit www.operationtroopappreciation.com.