John D. Graham is a former senior official in the George W. Bush administration and the former dean of the Indiana University O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs (formerly SPEA).

He earned his Bachelor of Arts in politics and economics at Wake Forest University in 1978, where he also won national awards as an intercollegiate debater.

He earned his Master of Arts in public policy at Duke University in 1980 before serving as staff associate to Chairman Howard Raiffa's Committee on Risk and Decision Making of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, (Washington, D.C.).

He earned his Ph.D. in public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and his doctoral dissertation on automobile safety, written at the Brookings Institution, was cited in pro-airbag decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983 and by Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole in 1985.

[3] By raising over $10 million in project grants and philanthropic contributions, Graham helped support eight new faculty positions and dozens of post-doctoral and doctoral students.

Graham is widely known to the public and to opinion leaders through his entertaining speeches about why Americans are both paranoid and neglectful of risks in their daily lives.

In this capacity, Graham worked to slash the growth of regulatory costs by 70 percent while encouraging regulations that save lives, prevent disease, and protect the environment.

Professor Graham is a longtime director of NSF International (Ann Arbor, Michigan) and an elected Fellow, National Academy of Public Administration (2009).