Gregory Griffin was born in Tomah, the third of eleven children, and grew up on a farm outside of town. He attended Tomah High School from 1952 to 1956, participating in Chorus, Boys Quartet, Madrigals, Band, Forensics, yearbook, and school plays. Following graduation, he served on active duty in the Navy for three years before graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with degrees in Economics and Political Science and a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning.  

After earning his master’s, he was hired as the first Executive Director of the Health Planning Council (HPC) which piqued his interest in hospital operations and led him to strategic institutional planning at St. Mary’s hospital in Madison. In 1975, he was appointed COO and led affiliations between St. Mary’s, their physicians, and several rural hospitals. He saw firsthand the inequities between small-town health systems to that of larger urban systems and began focusing on advocating for rural and small-town health care access and created The Lakewood Group, LTD, in 1985, which provided strategic and operating services to at-risk hospitals. Ten years later, a family need coupled with a lack of facilities allowing Seniors to get high quality care in a home-like facility and stay in their own community, created an opportunity to develop his own such facility, bringing the assisted living industry to Wisconsin. Greg and his wife went on to develop, own and operate 12 additional facilities in small Wisconsin towns. 

Greg and his wife Carol married in 1963 and raised four children together. Aside from his professional life, Greg served in multiple other capacities through his church, as a member of the Madison Downtown Rotary for 41 years, serving on the Governor’s Health Planning and Policy Task Force for 5 years and as a member of the board of Dean Health System for 8 years. Education has always been extremely important, both as a student and as a teacher-mentor, starting out with fond memories of his High School principal Miss Mary McAdams. She noticed something worthwhile in him, encouraging him and keeping him on track throughout his time at Tomah High School. He himself wanted to give to others in that way and worked as a part-time clinical teacher at the UW-Madison graduate program in Health Administration and served as a preceptor for programs in health care administration for over 10 years, sharing his passion for small town health care access.