Making Good on a Promise: Greg Deja's First Gig
by Ryan Brown
Before Greg Deja was the president of Catholic Central, he was the guy standing in the hallway making sure I got to class on time, which makes this one of the stranger role reversals that My 1st Gig has produced. He was my principal at Catholic Central. We went to the same college, John Carroll University in Ohio. I’d go as far as to say I would not have ended up at John Carroll, which had a lasting impact on my own career, if not for Greg.
Today, he is the president of Catholic Central High School in Grand Rapids, having just returned to lead the school through what he calls a generational transformation, the Catholic Promise.
But when Greg sat down with me on My 1st Gig, we didn't start with the capital campaigns, his transition in and out of the foundation work, or the Promise. We started in a hotel lobby in South Bend, Indiana, where a religious brother with an Australian accent handed a 22-year-old his entire career without so much as a real interview.
A Job He Never Applied For
Greg finished his English and education degree at John Carroll exhausted, watching classmates land cushy jobs or medical school acceptances while he schlepped through student teaching. His path forward ran through a graduate program in school administration run out of Providence College, and the program director, Brother Pat, did his interviewing on the road because Rhode Island wasn't exactly a short drive from Ohio. So, Greg met him in a hotel lobby.
The program worked backwards from what most people expect. Brother Pat wasn't screening candidates so much as matching whoever he had to whatever Catholic schools needed teachers that year. Most placements went to struggling schools desperate for cheap, energetic labor. Greg got the outlier: Bishop Feehan, a well-established school with a waiting list, a PhD on staff, and a veteran department chair named Dr. Regina Sylvia, who would be his mentor. He found out the name of the school, agreed to go, and that was that. No interview. No negotiation. Just placed.
Learning to Show Up Prepared
At Bishop Feehan, teachers didn't have their own classrooms. Greg rolled a cart from room to room, which meant there was no hiding behind clutter or half-baked lesson plans. He was 22, teaching British Lit and senior composition to 17- and 18-year-olds who could smell inexperience from across the room, sharing space with a 25-year veteran who was, whether she meant to or not, always watching.
The days were relentless. In the classroom by seven, coaching football and track from 3:30 to 6, then a Wendy's baked potato on the drive to grad classes at Providence College, all on a stipend of about $14,000 a year. He was broke, exhausted, and constantly aware that performance mattered because someone was always paying attention. Looking back, he says that stretch taught him accountability before he ever had a title that required it: show up prepared, take pride in the work, and don't sandbag it because nobody is going to cover for you.
The Job That Blew Up
Four years later, at 26, Greg had two job offers and took the one at Catholic Central without blinking, even though he was a thousand miles away with a résumé that, in his words, barely qualified him for the role. Eight months into that first year as assistant principal, the bishop called both Catholic high school staffs into a room, brought in the auditors, and told them the schools were essentially bankrupt. Within that year, Catholic Central and West Catholic went from two principals to one each, nine teachers were let go, and more than a hundred students had to be dealt with over unpaid tuition.
Greg credits his stubbornness, part middle child, part D3 football player who hated losing, with keeping him in a job that, by his own admission, he might talk a younger version of himself out of taking today. But he stayed, the school stabilized, and what followed was a run that included a $20 million capital campaign, the state's first STEM-certified high school designation, and the launch of the school's house system.
A Detour, and Then Full Circle
When Greg finally ran out of ideas at Catholic Central, he left to become the first full-time executive director of the Catholic Foundation of West Michigan, essentially a startup inside the church. He learned how the whole Catholic ecosystem actually functions, picked up real fluency in investment management by sitting in on the trustees' committee, and came to see fundraising less as sales and more as invitation. After more than doubling assets under management and growing annual grantmaking by 66 percent, Catholic Central came calling again. This time, the timing and the title of president rather than principal actually fit.
That homecoming set up the Catholic Promise, a ten-year commitment from alumni couple Dan and Sherry Bowen that caps a family's tuition contribution at $6,000 a year and covers the rest, for up to 500 students. It is aimed squarely at the hard-working, middle-income Catholic families who have been priced out of Catholic education for a generation. The early data, Greg says, already shows it working: the largest freshman class in years, and a noticeably different makeup of families walking through the door.
Go For It
Asked what he'd tell someone standing at the start of their own first gig, Greg didn't hesitate. Be scared. If you're not scared, you're doing it wrong. Take the fear that comes with any real jump, whether it's a freshman stepping onto a varsity field or a 22-year-old taking a job he never actually interviewed for, and use it as fuel instead of a reason to hold back. You don't need all the answers. You need enough confidence in yourself to go find them.