Career
Until January, 2015, he was the founding executive director of the Charter for Compassion, launched in 2008 by TED.com and Karen Armstrong, with the mission of supporting the emergence of a global compassion movement. He is the author of The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family. Himes" grandfather was John R. Rice, dean of American fundamentalists for decades until his death in 1980, and mentor to many younger Baptist preachers including Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, as well as founding editor of The Sword of the Lord newspaper.
By the age of 17, Himes had turned his back on the career as a Baptist preacher expected of him by his family, becoming instead an activist in the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 60s and 70s.
In 1989, Himes was founding editor of MacTech, a journal of Macintosh software development. In 1992, he was founding editor of the Microsoft Developer Network, and then led the first web development project in the history of the company, a project dubbed the MSDN OffRamp, aimed at making articles, resources, and technical information available on the Internet to an audience of software developers.
Beginning in 1994 Himes managed Microsoft"s platform web team producing the sites for all of Microsoft’s operating systems, browsers, development tools, and technologies. In 2004, Himes founded Voices Education Project, a web site dedicated to teaching peace and compassion, now the education program of the Charter for Compassion.