About Pete

Years ago, a short bio was written about me for a public appear­ance but was later pulled from pub­li­ca­tion when the event was can­celled.  I’ve left out the author’s name since I haven’t yet secured per­mis­sion to use it, but it was a very flat­tering and hum­bling piece.

Sometimes you don’t realize how lucky you’ve been or how rich your life expe­ri­ences are until someone else starts enu­mer­ating them for you. After reading this text, I was some­what sur­prised myself by the many things I’ve been for­tu­nate enough to have expe­ri­enced — so far — and by the many amazing people I’ve met and known.

Pete Griffith Biographical Sketch

“I orig­i­nally intended to sit down with Pete Griffith and dis­cuss plans to write a simple para­graph for his bio­graph­ical entry as part of a speaker’s background piece I was writing. But when I learned of his vast and diverse expe­ri­ence — both pro­fes­sion­ally and per­son­ally — I knew that a simple para­graph wouldn’t quite suffice.

Born just north of Windsor, Ontario, this adopted-Texan counts among his acquain­tances such nota­bles as, the Dalai Lama, the Queen of Thailand, four Nobel lau­re­ates, count­less best-selling authors from Malcolm Gladwell to Salmon Rushdie; celebri­ties from Steve Martin and Woody Allen to Dave Matthews and Iggy Pop; sports leg­ends from Mickey Mantle and Roger Staubach to Mike Modano, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus to name a few.

  • Pete has enjoyed some amazing expe­ri­ences and diverse accom­plish­ments in his life, including:
    • Landing on an active air­craft car­rier, the USS Eisenhower, while at sea
    • Playing pro (minor league) hockey as a goalie, and later owning a GCHL team
    • Being the first person to ever ice skate at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, home of the NHL Dallas Stars
    • Riding one of Don Gay’s prize bulls at the Mesquite Championship Rodeo
    • Participating in active archae­o­log­ical dig at Teotihuacan in Mexico
    • Driving high-performance cars at numerous race­ways and test tracks
    • Photographing some of the most pop­ular con­cert bands of the 70’s and 80’s
    • Writing his first com­puter pro­gram in 1977 using the US Navy diving tables to print and save an official scuba diving plan.
    • Training at Harvard’s pres­ti­gious School of Business with ‘The Harvard Business Review’
    • Being one of the first dozen people to see the ear­liest (hours old) photos of the Titanic’s ini­tial discovery
    • Visiting some of the ‘more restricted’ por­tions of the Los Alamos National Laboratories in N.M., including the world’s most powerful magnet laboratory.
    • Being a pub­lished writer in numerous con­sumer mag­a­zines totaling over 30 mil­lion circulation
    • Sequencing Beethoven’s entire 5th Symphony (not to men­tion every Led Zeppelin song among others) in ‘MIDI’ format in the early 80’s
    • Visiting the Oval Office and meeting three U.S. pres­i­dents in person
    • Leading early production efforts for a major Hollywood movie about ‘Hitler’s Pope’, Pius XII and the death of his predecessor
    • Getting a hands-on expe­ri­ence with rem­nants of an orig­inal Gutenberg Press
    • Becoming a fully com­mis­sioned ‘Kentucky Colonel’ by decree of Governor Beshear
    • Constructing his own crossword puzzles that have been published internationally and picked up in national magazines.

Professionally, he rose from being a delivery driver to store man­ager of a major elec­tronics retailer by age twenty.  He man­aged, trained and inspired numerous sales teams to achieve remark­able results in a host of dif­ferent indus­tries.  His insa­tiable entre­pre­neurial spirit led him to be an early pio­neer of mar­keting on the Internet, and he’s devel­oped many suc­cessful web­sites and por­tals over the years.  Pete has cre­ated many online viral mar­keting cam­paigns using video, ani­ma­tion and his wry sense of humor, and he’s quite an accom­plished graphic designer in his spare time.

Pete is a cer­ti­fied scuba diver, accom­plished video pro­ducer, and a master at Scrabble.  He’s sailed the Gulf of Mexico, Montauk Point and the Potomac River. He’s hunted with trained rap­tors at the only accred­ited fal­coning institution in the U.S. and played golf at some of the most exclu­sive courses in the country. He enjoys col­lecting antique maps, globes, and flags, and is quite a geography/history buff.

When you ask him what ranks highest on his own list, Pete proudly names finding the his soul mate, Diana, a teacher and a native of Puerto Rico, and being a father to four amazing chil­dren: Justin (26) now serving in Iraq with the US Army, Nina (25) who made Pete a very proud grand­fa­ther with the birth of Noli, the pre­co­cious Patrick (4) who has plans to make it to the NHL someday, and Christian (2) who fears nothing, espe­cially his beloved daddy.

After my meeting with Pete Griffith, I real­ized three things:

1. Everyone should expe­ri­ence life as he has.

2. That any orga­ni­za­tion looking to uti­lize his diverse tal­ents in sales man­age­ment, mar­keting or web devel­op­ment would ben­efit tremen­dously from his unique levels of expe­ri­ence; and,

3. Pete is def­i­nitely going to be one of my lifelines if I’m ever on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

You can learn more about him at his per­sonal web­site, which, by the way, is appro­pri­ately named: pete​grif​fith​.com. ”

– 8/23/2009