Nicholas Everett Hollis

Nicholas E. Hollis
US Chamber Staff Photo

Nicholas Everett Hollis, born May 11, 1944 in Randolph, Vermont, became a leading trade expansionist over the last three decades of the twentieth century sponsoring dozens of high-level trade/investment missions and international conferences utilizing influential business and government positions in organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), Industry Center for Trade Negotiations (ICTN), U.S. Department of State/Agency for International Development (USAID), Agri-Energy Roundtable (AER), and most recently as president of The Agribusiness Council (ABC), a nonprofit organization founded by Henry Heinz II in 1967.

The eldest son of Everett L. Hollis, a prominent Chicago attorney, and Marion Armstrong Jennings, a fiction writer, Hollis grew up outside Washington DC and New York City, attended public schools and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history (with honors) from DePauw University (1966) and a master's degree in international affairs from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (1968). He also studied international law at the City of London College (1965) and the Bologna Center (1967).

After a year of teaching in Washington’s public schools, Hollis joined the International Group of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In a program largely devoted to bilateral councils, as a junior staffer Hollis was assigned to the export expansion and finance desk.

He also researched and authored position papers on trade policy subjects for the Chamber’s International Committee. He soon conceived a bold project aimed at strengthening U.S. export financing programs, organized a special task force of leading bankers and industrialists and recruited a top Caterpillar Tractor Company executive (V.V. Grant) to chair the campaign. Eighteen months later – with multiple meetings, two national surveys and a publication he authored, Hollis led the Task Force on Export Finance and Credit to testify before Congress and drafted language which formed the core of a successful legislative initiative called the Export Expansion Finance Act of 1971 (H.R. 8181) sponsored by Thomas “Lud” Ashley (D-OH), which broadened the programming flexibility and competitiveness of the Export Import Bank, spearheading a national drive to expand exports.
Hollis went on to staff the highly successful U.S.-European Businessmen’s Conference held in March 1972 (Paris) which brought him into direct interaction with some of the world’s top industrialists and formed an ongoing US-EC Business Council.