Roderick T. Nicholson is a native of St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up across the Mississippi River in East St. Louis, Illinois. In addition to having served the town of Terry, Mississippi, as its first African-American mayor, Rod Nicholson has worked more than thirty years as a civil engineer with the state and federal government. Rod Nicholson received his bachelor of science degree in civil engineering with a dual concentration of environmental and transportation engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Rod and his wife, JoAnn, have been married thirty-six years and have three adult children. In 2017, Rod started his own consulting business, Van Lissick Enterprice, LLC. Rod and his family reside in the Dallas-Fort-Worth, TX area.
