Holly Sinnott
Holly Sinnott’s fascination with international trade sparked early. Born and raised in Buffalo, Sinnott, M.U.P. ’98, spent days on her father’s boat watching traffic flow over the bridges connecting the United States and Canada. “I saw the potential of the border every day,” she says. She developed her technical and leadership skills in the UB Planning program, and today, as president and CEO of the World Trade Center Buffalo Niagara (WTCBN), she makes global business happen.
WTCBN, a private, nonprofit organization, started as the Niagara International Trade Council (NITC). Directors at NITC saw leadership in Sinnott’s planning and management approach and hired her to launch the WTCBN in July 2000, managing the transition from a networking and educational organization to a consulting practice providing comprehensive international trade services to businesses in the Buffalo-Niagara region.
When Sinnott works with a new client, she takes dry-erase markers to a huge world map on the wall of the main office. She draws in the business, its markets and centers of trade regulation. “The business needs to visualize itself as a world leader,” she asserts, and sees WTCBN as the “general contractor” that provides the means to build that vision. In consultations, she helps a business think creatively about where and how to most profitably expand. Sinnott explains that a 135-year-old local business in machine parts may have no technical edge in the U.S. and European markets, but can offer a revolutionary product in less-developed Uzbekistan or Jordan. One company wants to penetrate the textile market in China, another to streamline manufacturing processes dispersed over Mexico and Europe. Her clients need information about import/export regulations. Market evaluation, document translation services and intercultural training are also critical to business success.
“I’m not an expert in every world market,” Sinnott says, “but in business, networking is everything.” Beyond her own staff, the WTCBN’s nearly 300 sister World Trade Centers in more than 100 countries plug her into a “turbo-charged Rolodex.” With a phone call she taps information in Guangzhou in the People’s Republic of China; in Lille, France, or in Santiago, Chile. Such access keeps businesses competitive by saving critical time. With Sinnott’s help, one client increased trade volumes with Latin America by 28 percent in nine months.
Sinnott attributes her success with small- and medium-sized companies to her experience working in her family’s lumber business. “Can we make sales and can we meet our payroll? These were critical questions to our survival. Planning is about mediating between what you want to be as an individual and your place in a collective,” Sinnott explains. She recalls absorbing this lesson from UB urban planning professor emeritus David Perry, who inspired her own commitment to understanding trade as active implementation. “It’s about change at the grass-roots level,” she asserts. “The more a company engages in international markets, the healthier it is and the healthier the region is.”
Reflecting on the scope of her work, Sinnott concludes, “It’s about giving back.” She feels “huge gratification” when a company makes an international deal, knowing that dollars flowing into a company affect many people. In 2003, she accompanied a group of about 25 UB M.B.A. students to China, giving back by enriching the education of a new generation of global entrepreneurs. This sense of mission stems from her pride as a Western New Yorker. “Trade is this region’s past and its future,” she says. “We are doing our community a service when we put Buffalo-Niagara on a pedestal for the world to see.”
Originally appeared in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue of UB Today as part of the article Creating Innovative Environments: Inside and Out by Tacey A. Roslowski, Ph.D. '91.
