Before moving from a Cambridge condo to his Needham home in 1991, the only thing Michael Greis knew about Needham was that it housed major defense contractor GTE.
An employee for IBM at the time, Greis would drive back and forth from Needham’s Industrial Park to visit GTE customers, but had no other interactions with the community.
“One rainy Saturday, [my wife] Gloria and I just were looking at each other [and] I said, ‘You know, it’s raining, let’s go out to Needham — we’ll go to an open house,’” Greis said. “We went to an open house, we met a broker there and we just loved the town.”
Thirty-five years later, they still love it.
“We’ve loved it since the first day we got here,” said Greis. “I remember that we were driving by Memorial Park, just after we closed on the house or something, and said, ‘You know, it looks like the kind of community that has parades and fireworks.’”
Greis jumped into town affairs right away, joining Town Meeting in 1995. Since then, he has become a member of the Needham Exchange Club, a member of the Climate Action Committee, an officer for the Great Hall Performance Foundation, and president of the town’s local cable television service, The Needham Channel. Greis is also the founder and chair of Green Needham Collaborative, a volunteer organization developing financial models for renewable energy and energy efficiency within municipal contexts.
Green Needham is just one outworking of Greis’ passion for ethical business and sustainability. After earning an undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale, followed by an M.S. in finance from Boston College, Greis built his career around sustainable investing. Now a full-time lecturer at Bentley, he teaches students the value of ethical business.
In his 21st year as a school committee member, Greis said his passion for ethical business and sustainability carries over in the ways he is able to come alongside students.
“I’m regularly contacted by the wonderful, wonderful students at the Greater Boston Project when they have to do their community project,” he said. “Every year they’ll reach out and say, ’Do you have any ideas?’ A lot of them are interested in sustainability. So we’ve helped them put together a couple [projects].”
The long-time resident is currently the longest-serving member of the school committee, after joining in 2005 with a son and a daughter in the NPS system.
Cliff Hayden, whose family has been best friends and board-game competitors with the Greis family for three decades, said Greis is “whip-smart” (“he didn’t go to Yale for nothing”) and a strong strategic thinker — skills Hayden believes benefit his work on the school committee.
“He really does a great job of thinking through, you know, what are the longer-term implications of what it is that we’re considering in the moment, and seeing how that’s going to play out in the longer term,” Hayden said. “That’s why he’s such a competitive board game player, because he’s always thinking strategically. He’s the slowest player of the four of us because of that.”
Hayden, who first met Greis as his new manager after joining IBM in 1988, said he has seen Greis mature in his ability to collaborate with others over the course of their friendship. He has also seen Greis’ understanding of the school system deepen with experience.
In his seventh term, Greis continues to love serving the NPS schools as a committee member, which, in his mind, is the only requisite needed to continue doing so.
Greis notes that more and more he finds himself “being asked about stuff” from other members of the school committee — “because I’ve been doing it for a while, so people will look for that information.”
“People say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t be on [the committee] for too long,’” said Greis. “I said, well, when I’ve looked at other people in public office, I look at them and say, ‘OK, are you still engaged?’ If you’re at the point where you’re mailing it in, then it’s time to go. If you’re still engaged and you’re still active and you really care about it, then your experience is a huge plus; it’s a huge plus.”
Outside of everyday work, leading various initiatives and participating in committees, Greis’ slim amount of free time centers around food, an affinity for Japanese culture (though he was born in Brazil and raised on Long Island), board-game nights and cocktail-making.
His favorite cocktail to mix? A classic gin martini.
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