[8] He is also chair emeritus of the board of directors of the United States Naval Institute[9][10][11] and a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

[16] 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.

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

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

[34] In his 2008 book, Destroyer Captain: Lessons of a First Command, Stavridis wrote: 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.

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.

[36] 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.

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

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

Stavridis has stressed the need to connect international, inter-agency, and public-private actors to build security, lining all of them with effective strategic communications.

Based on an anonymous complaint, in early 2011 the Department of Defense Inspector General began investigating allegations that Stavridis "engaged in misconduct relating to official and unofficial travel and other matters."

In a Memorandum for the Record,[41] Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus wrote that Stavridis "has consistently demonstrated himself to be a model naval officer and a devoted public servant whose motivation is to do that which is necessary and appropriate to advance the interests of the United States."

Mabus concluded that "I have determined that ADM Stavridis never attempted to use his public office for private gain nor did he commit personal misconduct.

As dean, Stavridis initiated a strategic planning process, invited several high level speakers to the campus, and is focusing thematically on the Arctic, the role of women in international relations, synthetic biology and its impact on foreign affairs, cyber, and the role of online media and social networks in public diplomacy.

[43] Since leaving active duty, Stavridis has frequently appeared on major broadcast and cable television networks to comment on national security and foreign policy matters.

He is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist[48] and has written hundreds of articles in many diverse publications including Time,[49] Nikkei Asian Review,[50] Foreign Policy,[51] Huffington World Post, and Proceedings, the magazine of the U.S.

[1] Tufts University had a remote television studio installed[52] on the campus of The Fletcher School so that Stavridis and other faculty and administrators could easily make themselves available to the international media.

[60] In July 2022 he was writer-in-residence at Hemingway House in Ketchum, Idaho[61] and was a featured speaker at the Sun Valley Writer's Conference in 2022[62] and 2021.

[66][67] Commenting on the hypothetical acquisition, Stavridis added "It's not a crazy idea," continuing that Greenland is "a strategic goldmine for the United States.

Surface Warfare Officer qualification Stavridis has received an array of other awards and honors, including the following (listed by date conferred): In 2020, character traits developed by Stavridis were used as the basis for a business fable by Amy S. Hamilton, called the Consummate Communicator: Character Traits of True Professionals, which provides a guide for how to interact in the workplace.