Nicholas Greanias
Nicholas J. (Nick) Greanias is a foreign policy professional whose career spans law, the military, international diplomacy, university teaching, and religious ministry.
He was commissioned as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State in 1990, with overseas diplomatic assignments in Toronto, Bucharest, Athens, and Auckland, where he served as Consular Chief, and on occasion charge d’affaires in independent Samoa. In Washington, Nick worked on the Ukraine desk; in the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs on the interagency team guiding USG action before the United Nations Security Council; as an instructor for three years in the Orientation Division of the National Foreign Affairs Training Center; and as a State Department Fellow on Capitol Hill. He received eight Superior and Meritorious Honor awards in his nearly twenty-one- year Foreign Service career.
While stationed in Auckland, Nick fulfilled a long-held ambition to unite his professional career with his faith. In 2008, he was ordained to the priesthood in the Greek Orthodox Church of New Zealand. He became a practitioner of “tentmaking”—an ancient tradition in which clergy maintain secular employment while carrying out pastoral ministry. In Auckland, he balanced his diplomatic responsibilities at the U.S. Consulate with leading the Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity.
Before entering the Foreign Service, after a college degree in Classics and then law school, Nick served on active duty for nine years as a military attorney in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, also earning an LLM at the JAG School at the University of Virginia, retiring later from the U.S. Army Reserves with 24 years total service. After leaving active duty, Nick practiced law and simultaneously founded and directed a theatre troupe in Chicago for three years, before transitioning to his career in international relations.
After retiring from the Foreign Service, Nick taught a course in American Foreign Policy at Loyola University Chicago for five years. He currently serves as a Greek Orthodox parish priest in suburban Chicago.
Born to Greek immigrant parents, Nick grew up in Decatur, Illinois, where he was immersed in both American civic life and the traditions of the Greek Orthodox Church. Nick and his wife, Mary, share a passion for the performing arts and are active in musical theater, opera, and drama. In 1998 they were blessed with the birth of twin sons, Johnny and Theodore.