By Laurel Busby
Staff Writer
Incoming Rotary Club President Holly Davis will head a group that is dedicated to service and loves to have fun.
Instead of an installation party for their new president, the Rotary Club of Pacific Palisades held a Demotion Party on June 25 to roast the outgoing presidents.
“Our Rotary Club is an irreverent and self-deprecating group,” Davis said. “The party always includes a comedy skit poking fun at the outgoing president,” and in this case four of the group’s past presidents— Dick Meyer, Kevin Niles, Tom Welch and David Card—shared the president’s duties.
Photo: Lesly Hall
The club’s new president is a busy Coldwell Banker realtor and longtime Palisadian, who for several years has enjoyed the club’s dedication to the local community.
At the weekly 7:15 a.m. breakfast meeting at Aldersgate Lodge, Davis said the 24 members conduct business, such as organizing their recent Texas Hold’em tournament, which earned about $14,000 this year.
The group also orchestrated donations to the Palisades-Malibu YMCA, Boy Scouts, Access Books (a group that provides libraries for schools), the Village Green and the first talent show at Marquez Elemen- tary. The club also supports the Interact Club, a Rotary Club at Palisades High, and this year provided $6,000 in scholarships to nine Paul Revere and PaliHi students.
Every meeting features an “extremely interesting” guest speaker, such as a Miss California contestant who spoke recently about overcoming challenges and building strengths, Davis said. The breakfasts close with the Four-Way Test, a guide to considering one’s actions before taking them. The test includes four questions: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
“The Four-Way Test is what we as Rotarians strive for in our lives and share in our community,” Davis said.
To ready herself for her new position, Davis attended a three-day training session with other incoming presidents and learned more about the organization, which has 1.2 million members in 33,000 clubs across 200 countries. Rotary clubs “provide humanitarian service and help build goodwill and peace,” Davis said.
Until the training, “I myself didn’t realize how much we do—no one ever hears about it,”Davis said.“My focus this year is to get more members, build the club and have the community be aware that we exist and what we do. I don’t think the community realizes how much we do for the community, the kids and the schools.”
Davis also gives her time to the Palisades Chamber of Commerce and enjoys work- ing on various functions, such as last year’s Foodie Fest and the Auto Expo. “Whatever they need, I’m always there,” she said.
Chamber Executive Director Arnie Wishnick agreed, “We like Holly. She’s a worker bee.”
For more than 30 years, Davis has also worked for Coldwell Banker (and its predecessors Jon Douglas and Prudential Jon
Douglas), where she has been honored as one of the company’s top 100 California realtors and part of its International Pres- ident’s Elite, which recognizes the top 4 percent of its agents worldwide.
Her path to becoming a realtor began in her birthplace, Mexico. As a child, she moved to Monterey Park, where her 94- year-old mother still lives and where Davis grew up in a Catholic family—the second of 10 children. In her 20s, after earning a degree in gerontology from Cal State L.A., she started to earn a master’s degree, but then changed direction to work first at a small law firm before a relative trained her in real estate.
He taught her that “you do sales, leases, high-end, low-end, whatever,” Davis said, and she still follows that advice in her residential property work. “Whatever people want me to do, I do,” noted Davis, who with her late husband, Mike, had one son, Phillip, and now has two grandchildren, Drew and Sarah.
As a young woman, Davis moved to the Palisades, and she has treasured her career as a local realtor.
“I love the interaction with people and the excitement I see when they find the right house or when I get the right price for their house,” Davis said. “I love seeing their joy.”
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