Before realizing these achievements, however, Greg was just another inner-city kid growing up in South Jamaica, Queens, New York, during the late 1980s at the height of the crack epidemic. Like many from challenge-infested neighborhoods, he possessed talents that not even he realized, and opportunity never seemed within reach. To get to and from school each day, he had to walk through the projects, where gang and drug-related violence was inescapable. Greg could easily have given in to the hopelessness and despair brought on by endless poverty, racial inequity, gun violence and fear.

Instead, with the support of his mother and stepfather who fought hard for Greg to get the very best education possible, he pushed himself to graduate in the top 15% of his high school class (at an underfunded NYC high school noted solely for its high teen pregnancy and HIV-infection rates, a 2.7 GPA qualified him as among the best) enabling him to attend Arizona State University. Though he had to take remedial courses during his first year at ASU to catch up to the other students, Greg soon excelled at ASU, including being named Most Outstanding Undergraduate - ASU College of Public Programs, forever transforming his life and career choices.