James George Stavridis (born February 15, 1955) is a retired United States Navy admiral, currently vice chair, global affairs and managing director 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. He is an associate fellow of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and a member of the Inter-American Dialogue.Stavridis graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1976. 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. 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. 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 stepped down in August 2018.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. His book The Accidental Admiral, describing his time in the Navy, was published in October 2014. 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's non-fiction bestseller list. 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. Source: Wikipedia (en)