Nicole Hoplin

Nicole Hoplin, Director of Foundation Relations

Nicole completed her undergraduate education at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. During her time there, she helped organize Young America’s Foundation lectures featuring Lt. Col. Oliver North, Ralph Reed, and Ben Stein. She has dedicated her life to advancing conservative ideas ever since she heard Lt. Col. Oliver North her freshman year of college! It is a bond she shares with many other young people who come to know conservatism through a Young America’s Foundation campus lecture and then go on to work in the Conservative Movement to give others that same life-changing experience.

Upon graduating with degrees in political science and psychology, Nicole completed a one-year fellowship with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in the Office of Intergovernmental and International Affairs and served as a national field director for the College Republican National Committee, managing a staff of twelve as they recruited young conservatives across the country to become active campaign volunteers for the 2002 election cycle. Nicole graduated with her Masters in Public Policy (MPP) degree with a concentration in Nonprofit Management and Leadership summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota in 2007.

After spending two and a half years as Foundation President Ron Robinson’s assistant in Herndon, Virginia, Nicole relocated back to her home state of Minnesota to write a book to be published by Young America’s Foundation and Spence Publishing in 2007. The book, A Cause That Triumphed: The Secret Gifts that Made a Movement, profiles the most important philanthropic gifts to advance freedom and free enterprise and the individuals who sacrificed to make those gifts.

Following the completion of the book, Nicole and her husband, Eric, moved to New York City, and she has assumed the position of director of foundation relations. In that capacity, Nicole is building relationships with granting foundations to identify mutually-held goals and to develop partnerships to advance freedom and liberty with new audiences of young people.

She and her husband, Eric, joined the Reagan Ranch Board of Governors in June 2005.