DSF: Tell us more about yourself (hometown, family information, etc.)
RG: I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio called Lakewood. I went to Duke for college and to Boston University for law school, and then moved to Milwaukee afterwards, staying there for 25 years working at a large law firm. I was a corporate lawyer doing mergers and acquisitions, and was managing partner of the firm for the last two years. Then a call came from the White House that changed things pretty dramatically.
I have a wife, Alex, and two kids: a son, Scott, who is at Wake Forest, and a son, Erik, who is with us here in Prague.
DSF: What made you decide to go to Duke, and what was your major while there?
RG: I think I decided at some point in high school that going to school in the South would be nice, and I looked at Duke, the University of Virginia, and Vanderbilt. When I walked onto the Duke campus, I thought that it would be a wonderful place to be, and that’s how it happened. It was a fabulous four years, and I majored in Political Science.
DSF: What made you decide that the Alpha Epsilon chapter of Delta Sigma Phi was for you?
RG: I lived on the same quad as a freshman with the Delta Sigs, and I got to know them through that. We had a wonderful pledge class, a very large pledge class at the time, and I met many wonderful guys there. To this day, some of my best friends are people I was in the Fraternity with at Duke. I think the strength of the pledge class and the great brothers seemed to fit with what I was looking for, and is a decision that I have never regretted.
I served as treasurer for the chapter for a year.
DSF: Talk to us about your career before your service as the US Ambassador to the Czech Republic.
RG: Well, as I said earlier I was a corporate lawyer, primarily representing privately held companies, some publicly traded companies, but mostly private businesses.
The firm, Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren , is about 200 lawyers, and serving as managing partner for the last two years was a great opportunity. It was an opportunity to run a business. We have many, many talented lawyers there who were a pleasure to work with. I stay in contact with many of the lawyers on an almost weekly basis. It was different though. Going from the daily practice of law to running a pretty substantial business was a jump, but it was great for my career, and I think we made some good progress.
DSF: Talk about the political volunteer roles you also served in while in your previous position.
RG: I was very involved in politics in the state of Wisconsin. I was chairman of the Republican Party for almost 8 years, and through that I started to do some government relations work as well.
As state chairman of the Republican Party, there were a lot of roles. In part, I was running a little business there, like I was at the law firm. It was managing people and being a spokesman for the Republican Party. Wisconsin was very much a swing state in both the 2000 and 2004 elections, and so I was very involved in that. The role also entails being involved with recruiting candidates, recruiting volunteers, raising money, and running the day-to-day operation of a political party.
It was a great experience, and I met many wonderful people all across the state of Wisconsin, and as I said I was very involved in two very close presidential elections in which Wisconsin was a key state in both.
DSF: Let’s now talk about your current role. What was the process like to get you appointed to the position of US Ambassador to the Czech Republic.
RG: I got a call from the White House in December 2005, asking me if I would be interested in serving as an Ambassador, and I heard nothing for several months. In March, I got another call asking if I would be interested in going to the Czech Republic, and I quickly said yes. I think that when the President asks you to serve, you serve.
It has been a tremendous honor, and a tremendous opportunity for me and for my family. It is a very long process, which includes a large amount of applications that you have to fill out, a very extensive background check, during which you really can’t tell anyone what’s going on because it’s confidential. You also go through a Senate hearing, since the nomination is subject to Senate confirmation so there was preparation for that. My wife and I went through two weeks of Ambassador school where they teach political appointees such as me the ways of the State Department, and what it’s like to be a part of an Embassy abroad.
There were lots of meetings and lots of consultations, and some language training, and before you know it, you’re on the plane on the way to your country. I spent 5 weeks in Washington last summer in preparation for it.
DSF: Have you had the chance to talk to the President to see what made him appoint you to the position?
RG: I haven’t asked that question, and don’t think I will. I worked very closely with him during the presidential elections in my capacity as state chairman, and the president spent a lot of time in Wisconsin both elections, and I suspect it was that political involvement that caused him to make his decision.
DSF: How difficult was it for you to leave the job you had, and the United States, to take this position?
RG: It (the law firm) was a place where I had spent a long time, my entire career actually, but I really made the decision very quickly. Again, I don’t think you can say no when the president asks. I think you have to do it, and I do it with great pleasure. Having been here for 6 months, it truly is an opportunity of a lifetime. The people you meet and the opportunities to make a difference are amazing.
The Czech Republic is not a huge country. It is a country with 10 ½ million people, so it’s something that you can truly understand and get your arms around, and that’s fun. It’s great representing our country in that capacity.
DSF: You started in September 2006. Thus far, what have been the main responsibilities, and what have you been doing?
RG: Responsibility number one is to represent the United States and to represent the president in this country. There are a couple of very big issues that are taking up a lot of my time right now. The US would like to place a missile defense radar facility in the Czech Republic to defend against threats coming from the Middle East. As you might expect, it is a pretty contentious issue so we’re spending a lot of time trying to educate and talk to government officials and local officials, as well as citizens of this country about why the United States would like to do this. Ultimately, it is a Czech decision whether to proceed or not, but we play a very public and significant role in this process at the Embassy.
Visas are another big issue here. As a United States citizen, we don’t need visas to come to the Czech Republic, but Czechs need a visa to go to the United States. The president would like to see that law changed by strengthening the security aspects of the current American law and at the same time relaxing the requirements that are necessary to participate in a visa free status, which some of the countries in Western Europe now do, but the Czechs do not. So that is another big issue that we’re spending a lot of time on.
Lastly, our Embassy has nearly 300 employees, 100 Americans and 200 Czechs, so it is a fairly large organization. Some of the same issues need to be dealt with here, as at any other organization, including working with people and making sure you’re communicating well.
We’re also working a lot on issues of transparency and corruption here. We’ve had our own problems in the United States, but there are issues here, and we think that working together we can start to address those problems to strengthen the institutions of democracy here. This has only been a democracy for about 17 years, so it is a very young democracy.
DSF: Do you have a typical day?
RG: A typical day is probably 15 or 16 hours. I have given three speeches today. We have a reception tonight for about 100 people at our residence. I’ve also had two or three press interviews and numerous internal meetings, and that’s not atypical. I’m not complaining—I enjoy every minute.
I’ve spent the last three days traveling in the country, out to the eastern part of the Czech Republic, meeting with the Regional Governor and mayors, and visiting American businesses that are in that region. I do a lot of traveling in country. That is a good snapshot of life as an Ambassador.
DSF: Tell us what are the thoughts of the Czech people on the U.S.?
RG: Contrary to what you might read in press reports, this country is very pro-America. At least this country in Europe is. I can’t speak for the rest of Europe. The United States has been there for the Czechs in important times in history. After World War II, after the Soviet occupation, the United States is the country that has been there for the Czechs, and I don’t sense any anti-American sentiment here at all. In fact, when I go out to the regions, and meet with the mayors at their City Halls, the American flag is flying at the top of their City Hall that day. The Czechs are great friends, great allies, and we work extraordinarily well together.
DSF: Talk a little more about what it’s like to live in a foreign country. What has it been like to live in a place where you don’t speak the language?
RG: Well, my wife and I take Czech lessons twice a week, and we’re still struggling. It’s a tough language although I’ll tell you that English is widely spoken. Virtually all of the government’s leadership can communicate in English, and if not, you learn to speak through translators, which just isn’t difficult after a period of time.
It’s different. It is a very public life. We live in an incredible residence, probably one of the finest pieces of property owned by the United States anywhere in the world. We have a staff of 10 that runs the residence, and that wasn’t the life we were living before. (laughs) It is different. Being an ambassador, particularly an American Ambassador in a country like this, it’s a very high profile position. So, with that comes responsibility and with that comes certainly a different lifestyle than we had in Wisconsin.
DSF: Obviously this is a pretty big honor for you. What are your goals after this?
RG: I think we’re likely to return to Wisconsin. I’ve only been doing this for
six months, so all of my attention is really focused on what I’m doing here, but we
love it in Wisconsin. We have great friends in Wisconsin. Our kids both grew up in Wisconsin, so I suspect that’s where we’ll go.
DSF: Do you have goals of running in the future for political office?
RG: (Laughs) I don’t know. I ran for the state legislature in 1990 unsuccessfully. I do
enjoy politics very much, and I guess you never say never to something like that,
however I have no current plans to do that.
DSF: Tell us more about what your philosophy on leadership is.
RG: I think it’s getting the most out of people. I think communication is very, very important. I am a big believer in planning, sitting down and thinking through what you’d like to accomplish, and measuring those accomplishments after a period of time. I think it’s also being a good listener, setting a direction and letting people do their jobs. I don’t think I am a micro-manager by any means. I try to set a course and direction with buy-in and input from others, and then try to move forward. That’ the approach I used at the law firm and it’s the approach I use now here in Prague, and it seems to work. I am a big believer in team, working together with people, and maximizing the strengths that people have.
DSF: What can you pinpoint from your time in the Fraternity that has helped you in your career?
RG: I think you start to develop leadership skills within the Fraternity. I think you learn to live with people with different perspectives, and to be understanding of that. I also think without question you learn the importance of friendship and at the end of the day, there may be nothing more important. I have incredible friends, who will be my friends forever, that I met during those four years. That was a very special time for me and for all of us. We all get together at least once per year. It’s probably no surprise that a number of them will be coming to Prague over the next couple of years. In fact, a whole crew of those guys showed up at my swearing in ceremony in Washington, which was great and made it a very special day for us.
DSF: What is the best piece of advice that you’ve been given?
RG: I think to be a good listener is the best piece of advice I’ve been given and I would share that with others as well.
DSF: If there are any brothers out there who would like to get into public service like working for an Embassy or for the Department of State, what would be your advice to them?
RG: Just talking to the people here, we have an incredibly talented group of career diplomats, who have lived all over the world, and who have experienced incredible things. It’s a very motivated, bright, talented group of folks who are trying to do the right things for the United States. It has really been a joy for me. I would encourage brothers to do that, but sitting here today and having the experience of the past six months, I would say that it is a great career. It’s really an experience that is hard to duplicate.
Rick Graber, Duke ’75, is the US Ambassador to the Czech Republic. He, his wife, Alex, and his son, Erik, reside in Prague, Czech Republic.
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