Senior Team Members

Bob Beckes, BSBA, chief financing adviser, is the founder and managing director of Peak Fiduciary, LLC, which provides comprehensive financial management services and trust fund administration for clients who are unable to manage their finances because of injury or illness. Early in his career in financial management, Beckes secured bridge financing for a high-tech medical products manufacturer and two years later helped lead the company to its initial public offering. He was also project manager for One United Bank Center in Denver and treasurer of a startup oil and gas company where he helped raise more than $300 million in private placements, formed one of the first master limited partnerships offered in public markets and negotiated a successful sale of the business for 100 times its original capitalization after only three years in operation. More recently Beckes was senior vice president of a Fortune 200 company where he led a division with worldwide operations and created more than $800 million in incremental profitability. 

Victor R. Dukay, MBA, Ph.D., president, founded DAL Management Consultants to address the needs of leaders trying to make positive change at both the individual, organizational and community levels. Dukay’s 15 years in the aviation industry included consulting on equity financing and leveraged buyouts of aviation-related companies and negotiating corporate acquisitions. Dukay spearheaded Partners for Collaborative Change™, a $1.2 million leadership and organizational capacity building program. Dukay and his team conducted a multiyear, multimillion dollar, seminal impact evaluation study looking at the effects international aid programs have on the lives of orphaned and vulnerable children . With funding from The Rockefeller Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation ,Dukay and his team created a groundbreaking framework to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of aid programs funded by U.S. tax dollars. Dukay is a graduate of Notre Dame University, where he majored in economics. He received his MBA, M.A. and Ph.D. (human communications) from the University of Denver. Dukay was awarded the 2011 Dr. Thomas A. Dooley Humanitarian Award from the University of Notre Dame and twice received the Contributions to the Improvement of Teamwork and Collaboration award from the University of Denver. Dukay is featured in a new book (The Humanitarian Leader in Each of Us-7 Choices That Shape a Socially Responsible Life by Frank LaFasto and Carl Larson) and lectures on leadership development and high performing impact teams.

Harryl Hollingsworth, M.A., project manager, is an instructional design specialist and writer whose areas of expertise include instructional design and development, needs assessment, training, evaluation, distance learning and grant writing. For the Mayor’s Office of Denver, Colorado, she conducted a six-county needs assessment to determine the housing and services needs for people living with HIV/AIDS and was responsible for survey design and implementation, focus group facilitation, logistics management and development of the final report. She recently developed a curriculum for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, focusing on hepatitis prevention, treatment and counseling within the public health sector.

Carl E. Larson, Ph.D., co-principal investigator, is a retired professor of human communication studies and past dean of social sciences at the University of Denver, and an expert in evaluative methodology. Larson is a recognized authority on teamwork and collaboration, and has frequently consulted with private and public sector organizations including Baxter Healthcare, Merrill Lynch, NASA, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Larson is the author of eight books, including The Humanitarian Leader in Each of Us: 7 Choices That Shape a Socially Responsible Life (with Frank LaFasto), and numerous professional articles on communication. His book, Collaborative Leadership—How Citizens and Civic Leaders Can Make a Difference (with David Chrislip), reports research results on successful collaborative projects and their leadership.

Allan Wallis, Ph.D., senior project consultant, is associate professor of public policy at the Graduate School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado at Denver, where he directs the concentration on local governments and teaches courses on leadership and ethics, urban social problems, urban politics, and growth management. He has served as interim director of the Wirth Chair in Sustainable Environmental and Community Development, director of the Ph.D. program in public affairs and director of research for the National Civic League. Wallis facilitated the development of a comprehensive HIV/AIDS service plan for the state of Colorado and metropolitan Denver as well as the Colorado Comprehensive Asthma Plan. He also was co-principal investigator in developing a handbook for conducting needs assessments in Colorado for those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.

Brian Williams, Ph.D., senior science adviser, is a former epidemiologist for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge University in England. Early in his career, Williams investigated methods to control tsetse flies and trypanosomiasis in Tanzania and Kenya, and subsequently at Oxford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Later in South Africa, he studied the epidemiology of occupational diseases of mine workers, mainly silicosis and tuberculosis, and also administered a project to control HIV and AIDS in Carletonville, the biggest gold mining complex in the world, focusing on mine workers, sex workers and adolescents. Williams co-founded the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA), based in Stellenbosch, South Africa, and was the senior author of two key modelling papers that demonstrated the impact that antiretroviral therapy could have on HIV and HIV-related tuberculosis in Africa. He is also co-founder and senior technical adviser of Test & Treat to End AIDS, an international partnership that promotes the use of immediate antiretroviral therapy to end the HIV epidemic.