Christopher Stratakis Pens First Novel
Paulette Poulos, Executive Director of Leadership 100, with Christopher Stratakis at book signing at Harvard Club of New York City on April 7, 2017. Photo Credit- Kosta Bej
Christopher Stratakis, a long-time member of Leadership 100, published his first novel, Appointment with Yesterday, a fictionalized memoir. Born and raised in Greece, Stratakis tells a moving tale of Yanni, a Greek boy who grows up on an island in the eastern Aegean. Yanni, left in the care of his grandparents, suffers deprivation and terror during the German occupation of World War II. He leaves Greece to rejoin his parents who had emigrated to pursue a better life in America. The novel captures the determined journey of the young boy.
Stratakis acknowledges at the end of the novel that ever since his teenaged years growing up on –yes, a remote Aegean island – he enjoyed writing essays, short stories and poems and had ambitions of becoming a professional writer, a yearning that continued throughout his life. The novel, he says, is the “culmination of those inner urgings”.
On April 7, 2017, Stratakis signed copies of his debut novel at the Harvard Club of New York City. Paulette Poulos, Executive Director of Leadership 100, attended.
A prominent New York attorney, Stratakis is senior partner of Poles, Tublin, Stratakis & Gonzalez, LLP, specializing in admiralty, commercial and real estate law. A graduate of Drexel University and New York University School of Law, he has written and published several articles, lectured on professional and historical subjects and served as legal counsel to several non-profits and as an arbitrator in maritime disputes. He is the author of Mnimes “Memories”, a book of essays, short stories and poems which he wrote as a teenager.
He has received numerous awards from religious, government and educational institutions. As an Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarch, Order of St. Andrew since 1998, he served on the National Council for 13 years and as Legal Counselor of the Order since 2001. He was honored by the Order of Saint Andrew with the Nicholas J. Bouras Award for Extraordinary Archon Stewardship on October 17, 2014. His wife, Maro, also a member of Leadership 100, was recognized as well. At that event, Archon John Stratakis, son of the honorees and also a member of Leadership 100, was Master of Ceremonies and the daughters of the honoree, Sophia Stratakis Huling and Erene Stratakis-Allen, offered musical and poetic tributes.
As Chairman of the Archon Legal Committee, Stratakis has been at the forefront of the fight for religious freedom for the Ecumenical Patriarchate, serving on religious freedom delegations of the Order to the capitals of Europe and to Ankara, Turkey.
