Nancy Collier Holden
Co-Founder
Nancy has researched her own family lines back to eleventh-century rabbinic scholars on one side and 1700s records on the other — work that took her into the Grodno, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Odessa archives, and required learning Hebrew, Rashi script, Polish, and Cyrillic along the way. She has served as President of the Jewish Genealogical Societies of both Los Angeles and Orange County, edited journals including Roots-Key and Shorashim, and was named IAJGS Volunteer of the Year in 2023. She has served as Education Director of JewishGen for the past decade, teaching an array of skills-based courses, as well as mentoring clients seeking to break through brick walls in researching their family histories. She brings that archival depth directly to client casework, particularly in Belarus, Ukraine, and the former Pale of Settlement.
Todd Holden, Ph.D.
Co-Founder
Todd holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Social Science from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and a B.A. in Social Ecology from UC Irvine, with genealogical certification from Boston University and the ProGen Study Group. A former tenured professor, his academic career trained him in long-form research, evidence analysis, and writing for publication — skills he now applies to client genealogical reports rather than peer review. He teaches a writing-for-researchers course at JewishGen and oversees project design and report quality at HoldenWorks. Client casework has involved projects in Galicia (now Poland), Bessarabia (now Romania and Ukraine), and the Soviet Union (now Belarus and Russia).