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John Paul Nichols spent much of his youth living in Brazil and Chile, and he converses fluently in Portuguese and Spanish. Before attending college, John Paul Nichols worked as an Area Manager for Howard Johnson International, Inc., overseeing properties between Miami and Fort Myers, Florida. He sought his undergraduate training in business administration at the University of Redlands, which awarded him a Bachelor of Science in 1988. Moving from Redlands to Claremont, California, the following year, John Paul Nichols obtained an Executive Master of Business Administration from Claremont Graduate University. Suitmark Hotels based in Austin, Texas, immediately hired John Paul Nichols as a Vice President of Operations, and he gained managerial responsibility for at least 22 hotels across the United States. After four years with Suitmark, he worked for Remington Hotel Corporation in Dallas as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, then Vice President of Owner Relations for HFS/Cendant Corporation out of Parsippany, New Jersey. At HFS/Cendant, John Paul Nichols supervised 1,200 hotels and managed customer relations with the companyâs top 60 clients. In 1998, he became President and Chief Executive Officer of Wingate Inns International, Inc., another subsidiary of Cendant. Within two years in this role, he expanded the number of hotels in the chain from 15 to 75. John Paul Nichols then became Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Cendantâs Hotel Division in 2000. Two years later, he joined RCI, which has become one of the worldâs largest brokers of timeshare exchanges. Over much of the ensuing decade, John Paul Nichols served as Executive Vice President for Leisure Property Management, President and CEO of RCI Latin American and Caribbean, and President and CEO of RCI International, where he directed operations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. In his most recent post as President and Managing Director for Group RCI, Wyndham Worldwide Corporation, John Paul Nichols oversaw the companyâs business in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East from his office in London.