Business
GoDaddy go-getter
Coming from a line of small-business owners, Greg Efthimiou, ’99, strives to give similar companies a competitive advantage. As GoDaddy’s vice president for public relations, he is connecting entrepreneurs with digital tools to grow their businesses.
Efthimiou’s grandfather was an entrepreneur who migrated to the U.S. from Greece in the early 1900s, and his father ran a maritime business that never employed more than six people.
“That gave me great exposure into what it takes to grow a thriving small business that becomes part of the fabric of a local community,” said Efthimiou, speaking from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Efthimiou found his way to GoDaddy after communications leadership roles at Honeywell and Bank of America Merchant Services. The married father of three is rooted in Charlotte, where his outside interests include serving Special Olympics.
“[Admission to Jepson] granted me the space to be intellectually curious.”
Consistently pressed on the job to meet reporters’ deadlines, Efthimiou is grateful that the Jepson School was more flexible with its own deadlines. After all, when he was a student, he walked into the associate dean’s office two weeks after the application deadline to ask about becoming a leadership studies major.
“And it was one of the best things to ever happen to me,” said Efthimiou, who is now a member of the Jepson School’s Executive Board of Advisors. “It granted me the space to be intellectually curious about the application of leadership across so many disciplines. That has served as jet fuel throughout my career to be good at the skills that I’ve been given but also to be interested and open to learning about other aspects of business and interpersonal dynamics.”