James G. Stavridis

"In the early 1920s, my grandfather, a short, stocky Greek schoolteacher named Dimitrios Stavridis, was expelled from Turkey as part of 'ethnic cleansing' (read pogrom) directed against Greeks living in the remains of the Ottoman Empire. He barely escaped with his life in a small boat crossing the Aegean Sea to Athens and thence to Ellis Island. His brother was not so lucky and was killed by the Turks as part of the violence directed at the Greek minority."

A NATO exercise off the coast of modern Turkey was the "most amazing historical irony [he] could imagine," and prompted Stavridis to write of his grandfather: "His grandson, who speaks barely a few words of Greek, returns in command of a billion-dollar destroyer to the very city—Smyrna, now called İzmir—from which he sailed in a refugee craft all those years ago."

James George Stavridis (born February 15, 1955) is a retired United States Navy admiral, currently vice chair, global affairs and a managing director-partner of the global investment firm the Carlyle Group, and chair of the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Stavridis serves as the chief international diplomacy and national security analyst for NBC News in New York.

He is also chair emeritus of the board of directors of the United States Naval Institute and a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Stavridis graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1976.

Stavridis is a 1976 distinguished graduate of the United States Naval Academy.

He is a career surface warfare officer and served at sea in aircraft carriers, cruisers, and destroyers.

After serving with distinction as Operations Officer on the newly commissioned USS Valley Forge (CG-50), Stavridis served as Executive Officer on USS Antietam CG-54.

Stavridis earned a PhD and Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1984, where he won the Gullion Prize.

Harvard University published a case study on Admiral Stavridis' leadership called "Hearts and Minds: Admiral Jim Stavridis on the Art of Wrangling NATO".

Stavridis commanded destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) from 1993 to 1995, completing deployments to Haiti, Bosnia, and the Persian Gulf.

Barry won the Battenberg Cup as the top ship in the Atlantic Fleet under his command.

In 1996–1997, he attended MIT Seminar XXI.

In 1998, he commanded Destroyer Squadron 21 and deployed to the Persian Gulf in 1998, winning the Navy League's John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational Leadership.

From 2002 to 2004, Stavridis commanded Enterprise Carrier Strike Group, conducting combat operations in the Persian Gulf in support of both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Afterwards, as a vice admiral, Stavridis served as senior military assistant to the United States Secretary of Defense.

While in the Navy, Stavridis served as the commander, United States Southern Command (2006 to 2009) and commander, United States European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (2009 to 2013), the first Navy officer to have held these positions.

On October 19, 2006, he became the first Navy officer to command the United States Southern Command in Miami, Florida.

In his 2008 book, Destroyer Captain: Lessons of a First Command, Stavridis wrote:

In July 2009, he became the 16th Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

Stavridis retired from the Navy in 2013 after thirty-seven years of service and became the dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, a graduate school for international affairs.

He retired as SACEUR in 2013.

Ashore, Stavridis served as a strategic and long range planner on the staffs of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

At the start of the "Global War on Terror", he was selected as the director of the Navy Operations Group, Deep Blue, USA.

His book The Accidental Admiral, describing his time in the Navy, was published in October 2014.

Stavridis was considered as a potential vice-presidential running mate by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 and as a possible Secretary of State by President-elect Donald Trump in the fall of 2016.

Stavridis is also a bestselling author.

The Leader's Bookshelf, published in 2017, describes the top 50 books that, according to Stavridis, inspire better leadership.

A second book published in 2017 called Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World's Oceans opened at No. 9 on The Washington Post non-fiction bestseller list.

He stepped down in August 2018.

His book Sailing True North: Ten Admirals and the Voyage of Character was published by Penguin Random House on October 15, 2019.

His novel 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, co-written with Elliot Ackerman and published in March 2021, debuted at No. 6 on The New York Times Best Seller list.

His book "The Sailor's Bookshelf: Fifty Books to Know the Sea" was published in November 2021 and "To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision" was published in May 2022.

His books have been published in twenty different languages.

Stavridis was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, son of Shirley Anne (Schaffer) and Paul George Stavridis.

His father was a United States Marine Corps colonel who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

Stavridis is married to Laura Hall, author of Navy Spouses Guide.

His paternal grandparents were Anatolian Greeks, born and raised in Western Anatolia, who emigrated to the United States.

His mother's family was Pennsylvania Dutch (German).