Carol Pierce Goglia

Catch Up & Read President, CEO

Carol Pierce Goglia has cultivated businesses and nonprofits in Dallas for more than two decades — but in her new role as president and CEO of Catch Up & Read, she’s digging deeper to get to the root of one of her passions: teaching children to read.

Goglia spent time working in DC, Baltimore, and Austin after graduating with an MBA from the University of Texas. Then, she returned to Dallas and spent almost a dozen years at Frito-Lay. As brand manager, she used consumer insights to build an award-winning marketing program with campaigns like “We Grow the Best Snacks on Earth” and the corporate tagline “Good Fun”.

While pregnant with her third child, Goglia took a giftedness profile and discovered that education and leadership development were her primary interests. After a series of casual conversations, Brent Christopher hired her as the senior marketing lead for Communities Foundation of Texas. 

“I got to use my marketing experience to grow North Texas Giving Day from $5 million to $50 million, creating a true communitywide giving movement for our region,” Goglia said. “… It was so rewarding.”

United to Learn turned to Goglia for her skills in building leadership, focusing on people, and encouraging volunteers. Through the nonprofit, she became deeply involved with F.P. Caillet Elementary School near Preston Hollow.

“I saw first-hand how Catch Up & Read was zeroing in on how we can get our children reading,” Goglia said. “CAR gives teachers the strategies to unlock learning with joyful results. Currently, we are training 150 teachers from 20 Dallas schools, 865 first through third graders participate in our after-school reading programs, and almost 4,000 students benefit from being taught in classrooms by our CAR-trained teachers.”

However, Goglia didn’t like reading as a child, but her mom, a teacher, would take her to the library.

“I remember I liked the book series Encyclopedia Brown about a young detective,” she said. “Now I read nonfiction. I am currently reading The War of Art.”

Goglia believes in the remarkable women she’s encountered through her family, career, and years of volunteerism with Big Thought, Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas, UT Dallas marketing department’s advisory council, the Vestry of Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal School, and her children’s schools.

In particular, she has always looked up to her maternal grandmother Ollie Mae Harrell.

“She was an artist and a businesswoman before many women worked,” Goglia said. “She contracted tuberculosis as a young woman and was left with only one lung. She suffered a stroke, taught herself to paint with her other hand, and survived breast cancer. … Her motto: ‘Inch by inch, life is a cinch.’”