Board of Directors Highlight - Greg Benning

This month we are highlighting the Male Vice-Chair of our Board of Directors, Greg Benning, who started rowing at the University of Pennsylvania in 1980 and has been engaged in the sport ever since. He was elected to the Board in 2019 for an initial 3-year term by USRowing's Championship Members.

Outside of rowing, Benning is a Boston-based investment banker specializing in life sciences with career experience of over 300 closed transactions. Relative to USRowing, he focuses on both fundraising and scenario-based planning and projection, which have been particularly applicable to his work on the finance committee during 2020. Specific initiatives he has championed are the creation of the Row To Tokyo campaign and the J&J/Apple Heartline study, which focuses on aFib in masters endurance athletes. Benning's primary interests are youth sculling, elite athlete wellness and retention and club management best practices.

Benning has been engaged in sport governance and leadership for over 35 years. Initially, with Penn Friends of Rowing, then Cambridge Boat Club as Director and President. He helped in the founding of Boston Rowing Federation, which supported three U.S. A-finalists at the 2016 Rio Olympics. As part of the Head of the Charles board nominating committee, he advocated strongly for gender diversity in the group. He has two children who rowed and sculled in club, school and college programs, and has a deep appreciation of U19 and U23 rowing. He co-founded the Head of the Quinobequin, a juniors-only, singles-only head race, which is hoping for its ninth run in 2021. This year, he is racing with Row Boston/Community Rowing, Inc., to help raise funds for the program's middle school sculling initiatives.

Benning spends a significant amount of time studying other national federations and their approaches to athlete development, competitive strategy and funding. Additionally, he races internationally several times a year and has numerous relationships in rowing leadership worldwide. He is regarded as a bit of a "wonk", was deeply involved in the creation of the NK Empower oarlock, spends a fair amount of time staying on top of different aspects of sport science and is always trying to figure out how to make his sculling just one percent more efficient. He was recently profiled in two Faster podcasts, in which he talked extensively about his role with USRowing and his approach to racing at the Head of the Charles.