John Albert Graham
John Graham shipped out on a freighter when he was sixteen, took part in the first ascent of Mt. McKinley´s North Wall at twenty, and hitchhiked around the world at twenty-two.
A Foreign Service Officer for fifteen years, he was in the middle of the revolution in Libya and the war in Vietnam. For three years in the mid-seventies, he was a member of NATO´s top-secret Nuclear Planning Group, then served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator John Glenn. As an assistant to Ambassador Andrew Young at the United Nations, he was deeply involved in U.S. initiatives in Southern Africa, South Asia and Cuba.
By most measures, he was very successful. But something was missing.
In 1980, a close brush with death aboard a burning cruise ship in the North Pacific forced him to a deeper search for meaning in his life. Now out of the Foreign Service, he began teaching better ways of handling challenge and conflict. Since 1983 he´s been a leader of the Giraffe Heroes Project, an international organization moving people to stick their necks out for the common good. The Project finds ordinary people acting with extraordinary courage on a broad range of important issues—then tells their stories to millions of others through the media, and in schools.
Graham is a familiar keynote speaker on themes of leadership, courage, meaning and service. He also leads Giraffe Heroes Project workshops, helping organizations, businesses and individuals handle their challenges more effectively.
Graham has done TV and radio all over the world and articles about him have appeared in major magazines and newspapers. He is the author of Outdoor Leadership, It´s Up to Us (a mentoring book for teens), and Stick Your Neck Out—A Street-smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond. His memoir, Sit Down Young Stranger, was published in 2008. Graham walks his talk, including today as an international peacemaker, active in the Middle East and Africa.
He has a degree in geology from Harvard and one in engineering from Stanford, neither of which he ever expects to use.
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Articles by John Albert Graham
July 20, 2011
Watching the sandbox antics in Washington you don´t know whether to laugh or cry. Why are we unable to build a future together even as the toxic consequences of our divisions become more apparent by the day? This piece suggests that we need to change what´s in our minds but above all we need to change what´s in our hearts. Naïve? What´s naïve is expecting that we can keep on our present bitter course and cope with the challenges bearing down on us.
February 24, 2011
In September 1969, as a young diplomat in Libya, I wrote the first biographic sketch of the country's new leader, Muammar Qaddhafi. It was less than a page; nobody then knew who he was. Of most importance to what's going on in Libya today, however, it was clear that the man was strong-willed, charismatic and mercurial, with a deep resentment of injustice wherever he found it. If Qaddhafi goes quietly into exile, I will be very surprised. I see it as entirely in his character to fight to the death, as he has promised to do.
August 12, 2010
When flight attendant Steven Slater had had enough abuse and slid off that plane, all of American cheered. But what happens if all we have left to battle injustice is our anger? More Tea Parties?. There are better options.
October 18, 2009
Former Foreign Service Officer John Graham suggests how lessons learned from Vietnam could yet lead us to success in Afghanistan.
August 01, 2009
What makes us safe in a very unsafe world? It takes a lot more, for me at least, then taking my shoes off at the airport and just knowing the good folks at Homeland Security are on their jobs. I just got back from Switzerland, where I participated in one of the most exciting and promising conferences I've been to in years. By emphasizing the link between personal and political change, and by broadening the definition of human security to include freedom from poverty and injustice, the Caux Forum on Human Security broke important new ground.
July 10, 2009
Our country over decades has jerry-built a health care "system" that is unfair and inefficient. We pay far more for far less care than any other industrialized nation. And we have forty million people uninsured for whom a major illness can mean mortgaging a home, not sending a kid to college, or worse. Here's what we can and should be doing about it.