Graham Walker

Background

About Graham Walker

Graham Walker, Ph.D- President of the Independent Institute in Oakland, Fellow of the Presidio Institute of San Francisco, and Senior Research Scholar at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton. I am an experienced senior executive with deep experience in turning around stalled institutions, leading stable organizations to breakout trajectory, and professionalizing start-ups. In past efforts, I have raised over $70 million, managed hundreds of employees, and led the way in community and government liaison, ethics, and compliance. As an academic, I am a constitutional scholar with interests in comparative constitutionalism, political philosophy, theology and education. Among my interests are the theory and practice of conscience rights. Developing the forgotten distinction between liberalism and constitutionalism, I examine the ways in which mature liberalism slips the leash of constitutionalism and—paradoxically—ends up undermining individual rights in the name of community values. My ancestry includes direct lineal descent from Spanish settlers who arrived in San Francisco in 1776 with the De Anza party, and I have a long family history in San Francisco, Berkeley, Sonoma, Petaluma and San Ramon, California.