AR-02: French Hill (R)
PROFILE
About Hill:
A ninth generation Arkansan, French Hill is the 22nd member of Congress to represent central Arkansas in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected on November 4, 2014, and began his first congressional term on January 3, 2015.
French Hill serves on the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services where he was appointed to the committee’s leadership team, first as majority whip and now as the lead Republican of the Subcommittee on National Security, Monetary Policy and International Institutions. He has led in promoting capital formation for entrepreneurs and spurring innovation in the rapidly growing Fintech field.
Beyond the financial services committee, Hill is a leader in the House of Representatives. Recently, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy named Hill as the Republican representative for the House on the critically important CARES Act Oversight Commission responsible for monitoring the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hill, too, was also asked by his peers in the House to serve as vice chairman of the Historically Black College and University Caucus as well as initiate and lead the House Entrepreneurship Caucus. And, due to his work on religious freedom, particularly on behalf of the Coptic Christian community in Egypt, Congressman Hill is frequently asked to support global religious freedom initiatives.
Prior to his congressional service, Hill was actively engaged in the Arkansas business community for over two decades as a community banker and investment professional.
Prior to his community banking work in Arkansas, he served as a senior official in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. In 1991, following his service at the Treasury, President Bush appointed Hill, at age 34, to be executive secretary to the president’s Economic Policy Council, where he coordinated White House domestic and international economic policy. French was awarded the distinguished service award by then-U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady in January 1993.
Throughout his career, French Hill has been active in civic affairs. He is a past president of the Rotary Club of Little Rock and served as the 2013 chairman of the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce. He also served on the board of Arkansas Children’s Hospital for 15 years and devoted service on the boards of the Arkansas Arts Center and Historic Arkansas Museum. Hill has received numerous awards and recognition for his longtime support of the Boy Scouts of America as well as arts and humanities, tourism, and historic preservation in Arkansas. In 2019, he was awarded the nation’s distinguished Eagle Scout recognition by the national Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
French Hill is a magna cum laude graduate in economics from Vanderbilt University. He and his wife Martha have a daughter, Sarah Elizabeth McKenzie Hill, and a son, William Payne Hill. The Hill family resides in Little Rock.