John is a nationally recognized thought leader and practitioner of stakeholder communications and integrated advocacy in higher education. His perspective on strategic communications and integrated advocacy developed through his unique mix of career experiences in government, the news media, and higher education.
John served eight years in the Maine State Legislature, including four years as House Majority Leader. His period of public service was sandwiched between positions as a print and broadcast journalist covering policymaking, politics, and the media. He also spent three years as a journalism professor at the University of Maine, where he taught and pursued a research focus on advocacy communications by interest groups.
John’s 29-year career as a senior higher education official included two land-grant institutions, the University of Maine and the University of Arkansas, and the Maine and Wisconsin state university systems. He held leadership roles on councils and committees of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). John has given numerous presentations on strategic communications and advocacy at conferences and workshops coordinated by those organizations.
John has received national awards as a journalist, public relations practitioner, and higher education leader. In 2018 he received the Marvin “Swede” Johnson Award, the highest honor given to a higher education state relations leader. The annual award is jointly bestowed by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), the American Association of State Universities and Colleges (AASCU), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Closer to home, he received the Maine Public Relations Council’s Edward Bernays Award for career achievement in the public relations profession and the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce’s “Arthur Comstock Professional Services Award” for years of volunteering his time and talents as an advocate for small business and economic development.
John has been published in scholarly journals, textbooks, and professional and popular publications such as the Columbia Journalism Review, Washington Journalism Review, and The Washington Monthly.
John holds a B.A. in journalism and an M.A. in speech communication from the University of Maine. Next to family time, his main interests are volunteering, baseball, books, music, and Maine seafood.