Recognizing Our Best: Greg Griffis

Customers don’t think about their network until there’s an outage. Greg Griffis, executive director of technology on the network engineering and operations team at Cox Communications, thinks about our network 24/7.  

For the past two years, Griffis has led the successful upgrade of our 20,800-mile national fiber-optic backbone network, easily the most important technical asset at Cox Communications. This initiative moves Cox toward the next generation of technology and allows us to deliver more reliable service to our customers. 

Greg’s commitment to this challenge and his leadership on this complex project makes him the latest recipient of the Gov. Cox Award.  

Greg was nominated for the award by Kevin Hart, Executive Vice President and Chief Product & Technology Officer, and Guy McCormick, Senior Vice President – Engineering. Guy commends Greg for his leadership qualities. 

 “Greg is a servant leader who walks the walk and focuses on providing his team with what they need to be successful,” Guy said. “The work his team does is often under the radar because they execute with excellence and are well ahead of issues that could impact customers.”  

Executing the plan  
The Governor Cox Award is given to an employee whose stellar job performance exemplifies What We Stand For.  

Greg was recognized for keeping his team focused and engaged, despite vendor challenges and turnover throughout the project. In the end, Greg’s team delivered advanced network architectures that will help Cox Communications realize in $100 million capital savings over the next five years. 

Greg leads a team of over 100 and says his primary role is to set them up for success — while making a little music along the way. Greg is a graduate of Georgia Tech and has been with Cox since 2002. He and his wife, Ellie, and their three children — Drew, Will and Molly — reside in Roswell, Georgia. 

“We aim to have a culture of innovation and fun,” Greg said. “It’s important to me that we have fun. If something goes wrong with the network, the whole company knows. That can be stressful, so I try to make sure the employee experience is good and even if we go through tough times, we make it through the other side better.”