IN 2016, MassINC and CommonWealth hosted Serious Fun, a humorous spoof on politicians and the Massachusetts political scene held at the John F. Kennedy Library. Greg Torres, the CEO of MassINC and the publisher of CommonWealth, appeared in one of the video skits as “the most interesting man in the world” – a funny take on the old Dos Equis commercial. Torres dived into the role, dressing up in a floppy hat and scarf and talking in Spanish and English to a trio of bobble heads that looked just like him. He was also filmed on the balcony fronting the State House, looking out at adoring fans.
For those who knew him, the skit was even funnier because the unassuming Torres would have been the last person in the world to claim the title of most interesting man. Yet in real life that was what he was – a very interesting man who found success in the public sector, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector. He also was an active philanthropist and someone who put his wife, family, and friends at the center of his life.
Torres died on July 31 at the age of 73 after a long fight with cancer. As powerful as the disease was that took his life, it paled in comparison to the person who lived it.
“Greg was motivated every day to make our world a better place and had the unique set of skills to make that happen,” said Ned Murphy, a long-time friend and colleague. “He had the emotional intelligence to create diverse consensus, and the generosity to deflect attention from himself and give full credit to others. You always felt more witty, more interesting, and more capable when you saw yourself reflected through Greg’s eyes.”
Like many multi-dimensional people, Torres was a study in contrasts. He was a well-known figure who shunned the spotlight. He was a gourmet chef, a wine connoisseur, and a world traveler who spent most of his life working for and funding people with little means. He was a Bob Dylan fan and a “Dead head” who was a fastidious dresser. He was a mentor to numerous young people, a fiercely supportive colleague, and a devoted family man. He was also a successful business leader, a tough negotiator, and a skilled politician in the best sense of the word.
Before he was any of those things, Torres was a tall, skinny kid from New Jersey, the son of an El Salvadorian father (Jesús Nazario Torres) and an Irish American mother (Josephine Kilgallon). His father’s journey from impoverished immigrant to Notre Dame graduate was legendary as Torres repeated it often and used it as an example of how to live his life. Torres was born on September 29, 1949, in New Rochelle, New York, and spent much of his early life in New Jersey. He attended St. Vincent’s College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he was cast as the lead in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Torres would often recite the lines from that play throughout his life.
After college, he moved to Boston to join what he referred to as “the wild west” of the human services community during the early days of the reforms that closed down the mental health and juvenile justice institutions. In the early 1970s, Torres worked as a cook in a half-way house for juveniles that was staffed by ex-convicts. He had a ponytail down to the middle of his back. He often said, “No one could tell who was running the place.”
It was there that he met his future wife, Elizabeth “Betsy” Pattullo, and began a life-long partnership that others envied and tried to emulate. “It is impossible to talk about Greg and not talk about Betsy,” said Tripp Jones, the founder of MassINC who worked in several capacities with Torres.
Pattullo and Torres shared a passion for criminal justice but they were also young and eager for adventure. In 1974, they moved to the Spanish island of Menorca where they would live for two years. Greg tended bar in the pueblo casino and worked as a chef in two restaurants.
After they returned to Massachusetts, they took jobs in state government. Pattullo became an administrator at the Department of Youth Services. Torres cut his hair and joined the Committee on Criminal Justice, a temporary executive branch agency created to manage federal criminal justice aid. That job led to a position in the Dukakis administration as the assistant secretary of criminal justice, and from there he went to Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. In 1984, he was hired as chief of staff to Sen. Patricia McGovern of Lawrence, the chair of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means who would remain a life long mentor and friend. “Everything I know about strategy, I learned from her,” he once said.
Two events in 1980 would prove to be life-changing. He married Pattullo in Cambridge on December 6 and joined the board of a small nonprofit called MENTOR that was struggling to make its way in the human services field.
During his time in state government, Torres learned how policy was made and power wielded. Part of a very smart team of legislative staffers at Ways and Means, he also developed a fascination with the power of ideas, data, and analysis. The committee at one point issued a series of reports on various aspects of state government – the courts, the criminal justice system, and what the committee called the “budget busters,” including Medicaid, pensions, debt service, and MBTA costs. The reports became front-page news around the state and helped frame Beacon Hill debates about spending choices.
Michael Dukakis, who was governor at the time, said the Ways and Means reports didn’t pull any punches. “When he went over to Ways and Means, they had a terrific staff, a really great operation,” Dukakis said in an interview in 2005. “But they began to issue these reports that would beat up on my administration – I’d say, ‘hey guys, can you give me 30 days?’ Sometimes they would give me fits but they were always the right kind of fits.”
McGovern said she can’t remember who came up with the idea for the reports, but says Torres was a driving force behind them. “He liked to fix things, bring people together and solve problems,” she said. “He understood how to do policy, but also how to translate the policy into language everyone could understand. It was because he understood people, and what motivated them.”
By the early 1990s, Torres had two sons, Jess and Gabe; a house in the suburbs; and a desire to make more money. He joined MENTOR, the human services organization with which he was previously associated. Its founder, Byron Hensley, had shifted to for-profit status in order to raise capital and expand its programming into new states. It was a bold and unusual move within the human services community but one which Torres believed in and felt he could help execute.
Torres remained at the company for 13 years, moving from the position of vice president for public affairs to president and CEO. He helped grow the regional company into a national network of human service providers serving vulnerable populations such as children in foster care, adults with developmental disabilities, and people with brain injuries. He changed the name of the company to The MENTOR Network.
“Greg was always about giving voice to the people who didn’t have it. It started with kids involved with the courts, ‘bad kids’ as everyone called them back then, and then abused and neglected kids that had absolutely no constituencies behind them,” said Bruce Nardella, who Torres recruited to the company in the mid-1990s. (Nardella would later become president and CEO).
Nardella said Torres had the vision, the strategy, and the confidence to pioneer a new concept in human services where growth capital fueled a network of local providers that would deliver services in their communities and have their administrative needs managed by a national hub. What was once a small, human services organization became a thriving national business. In 25 years, it grew the number of people it served from 1,000 to 35,000.
While Torres is often credited as the catalyst in the MENTOR success story, he rarely spoke of his role in it, reflecting both a personal discomfort with attention and a remarkably effective leadership strategy.
“Whenever Greg met with you, he always made you feel like you were the expert, not him,” said Nardella. “As a result, his team developed more quickly because of the confidence he gave us. Even if we stumbled, he stood behind us because he knew those experiences were invaluable to our continued development.”
Throughout his career, Torres put an inordinate amount of weight into relationships and often said there is nothing that can’t be solved when people get in a room together to talk it through.
Laura Rice was a vice president at the MENTOR Network and worked for Torres for 10 years. “I think Greg was proudest of his ability to set a tone at the company that said the people who work here matter, the people we serve matter, and, above all else, our commitment to each other is most important,” she said.
Jones, who knew Torres from the State House and worked with him at The Mentor Network and MassINC, said Torres followed the same philosophy in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. “Among this incredible mix of all the dimensions of Greg, what I loved and was inspired by was his empathy and appreciation for the imperfect human condition, his intolerance of the status quo, and his remarkable ability to take risk to do consequential social problem solving,” Jones said.
By the mid-2000s, Torres was ready for a new chapter. He and Patullo had both built companies – Torres at MENTOR and Pattullo at Beacon Health Strategies. They were easing into the role of grandparents. And they were major donors to a variety of causes, both political and in community service. They helped young people start non-profits to serve vulnerable people. They supported kids with no resources through college. When Roca Inc., a Chelsea-based organization dedicated to helping young people affected by urban violence, needed a board chair, Torres said yes despite being over-committed already. He helped Roca Executive Director Molly Baldwin build the organization into an internationally-renowned model for trauma-based interventions.
MassINC, a nonprofit that conducted research, owned a quarterly print journal called CommonWealth, and hosted events related to policy issues, offered him the president’s job in 2007. Torres accepted it with an eagerness to once again influence Massachusetts public policy. Approaching 60, he was not done trying to change things.
He brought in a new editor at the magazine, which launched a website and became more of a news organization. He launched a for-profit subsidiary called the MassINC Polling Group, which has enjoyed enormous success and helped fund the nonprofit. And the research arm began to pursue hot policy topics which helped to shape public debate about such issues as criminal justice reform and the state’s rainy day fund, as well as its flagship focus on the state’s “Gateway Cities.” It was also a platform for Torres to reignite his passion for criminal justice reform, the issue that he fought for all of his adult life and in some ways defined him as a person.
Michael Coelho, deputy commissioner of programs at the Massachusetts Probation Service and before that a top member of the staff at the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, said Torres would organize informal meetings with people in the criminal justice community to talk about problems and how to solve them.
“Greg always had a great way of focusing on the long-term goals. He didn’t tell you what to do. He invited a discussion,” Coelho said, chuckling at how Torres’s ideas often became his ideas. “He’s a relentless agent of change. He is an inspiring figure.”
MassINC not only conducted research on criminal justice issues but joined a coalition of groups advocating for policy changes on Beacon Hill. Ultimately, the work led to passage of sweeping criminal justice reform legislation in 2018.
Lauren Louison Grogan, who succeeded Torres as president of MassINC in 2018 when he became the chairman of the board, said she learned a lot from him. “Greg was the ultimate public policy advocate for the underdog,” she said. “He relished the tough fights. He played the long game, taking on criminal justice reform knowing well how complex and fraught the issue was in Massachusetts. And he never wanted credit for the win. Torres was never elected to office but he did more for the underdog than most officials ever will.”
Despite the health issues that challenged his last days, Torres was able to enjoy the rewards of a life well lived, with his partner, their sons and their families, and a seemingly endless community of people who were fortunate enough to be part of his world.