Mary W. Graham

Mary W. Graham co-directs the Transparency Policy Project. Graham’s research focuses on the politics of public disclosure, information strategies to improve public health and safety, new trends in environmental policy, and the struggle between government openness and secrecy in the United States from the 1700s to the present. Graham is the co-author with David Weil and Archon Fung of Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (Cambridge University Press, 2007). In an earlier book, Democracy by Disclosure (Brookings/Governance Institute, 2002), Graham examines the politics and effectiveness of three important controversial disclosure systems, nutritional labelling, toxic chemical disclosure, and disclosure of medical errors, and suggests how the architecture of such systems influences their effectiveness in improving health and safety. Graham is also the author of The Morning After Earth Day (Brookings/Governance Institute, 1999), which argues that a new generation of environmental problems calls for new policy approaches.

Graham has written for the Atlantic Monthly, the Financial Times, Environment magazine, Issues in Science and Technology, and other publications. She holds a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and an undergraduate degree from Harvard-Radcliffe.

Graham is a former trustee of the MacArthur Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, a former trustee of the National Archives Foundation, and a member of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Corporation.