Nancy M. Graham

Nancy Malley Graham (born Nancy Carol Roskam; June 5, 1946) is an American educator, lawyer, and politician. She formerly served as West Palm Beach, Florida's first strong mayor from 1991 to 1999. Although the office of mayor of West Palm Beach is officially nonpartisan, she was a member of the Republican Party during her tenure. Prior to holding a public office, Graham graduated with a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Florida in 1981. Moving to West Palm Beach two years later, Graham served as a member of several law firms in the 1980s in the West Palm Beach area. She was elected city commissioner in 1988 and promoted to vice mayor in 1989, but soon resigned to avoid a potential conflict of interest with her law firm. Following a brief return to private life, Graham successfully campaigned for the city's 1991 mayoral election, the first direct election for that office in several decades.

Graham became the first strong mayor of West Palm Beach upon her inauguration on November 21, 1991. She is most often recognized for revitalizing downtown West Palm Beach, especially for improvements to Clematis Street and the construction of CityPlace (now known as The Square), which opened about a year after she left office in 1999. After again briefly returning to the private sector, she served a short stint on the city's Downtown Development Authority board. In 2005, she moved to San Diego to become executive director of Centre City Development Corporation, but a misdemeanor conflict of interest conviction resulted in her being fined by the state of California and the city of San Diego. She also taught business law and political science at colleges in California and Tennessee before returning to Florida in 2016 and then back to West Palm Beach in 2017.