Our Founder

Gregory T. Walker
Founder/Global Creative Executive Director

A Life in Motion: Gregory T. Walker’s Journey Through Culture, Leadership, and Legacy

PHILADELPHIA — Gregory T. Walker has spent a lifetime building bridges—between cultures, across communities, and through time. With over 20+ years of leadership in arts festival management, professional theatre production, cultural engagement, public health, and nonprofit strategy, Walker is a veteran professional whose influence stretches across major American cities and into the deeper folds of familial legacy, entrepreneurship, and intellectual rigor.

Gregory T. Walker was raised in Bloomfield, a small suburban town in Connecticut, now based in Philadelphia. Mr. Walker brings to his current work a broad, interdisciplinary perspective honed across nine metropolitan areas and four continents. His career and character have been shaped not only by the institutions he has led and served, but by the people and places that raised him—most notably, the entrepreneurs in his own family.

Mr. Walker is a third-generation entrepreneur. His maternal grandfather ran a small seed, plant, and farm equipment store in the mid-20th century—a modest but vital enterprise in its Connecticut community. His paternal grandfather owned and operated a candy and cigarette shop that doubled as a local hub for lottery players and community chatter. But it was Walker’s father—reverently referred to as “The Elder”—who left perhaps the most indelible impression.

In the 1970s, after becoming the only Black regional manager for the national Howard Johnson’s restaurant chain, The Elder turned toward self-determination. Disillusioned with corporate limitations and seeking economic autonomy, he opened six restaurants and a vibrant nightclub in the Greater Hartford, Connecticut area. Walker watched closely, absorbing the rhythms of management, customer service, and above all—resilience.

Raised in a small, predominantly Jewish, suburban town in Connecticut, Walker grew up navigating cultural boundaries while internalizing the value of process and planning. His upbringing was both rooted and expansive. “Even as a child,” he once reflected, “I understood that identity was complex, and that success wasn’t just about money—but meaning.”

That hunger for meaning would propel him into a life of civic service, global curiosity, and artistic advocacy. Over the past three decades, Mr. Walker has lived and worked in New York City, San Francisco, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Atlanta, Evanston, Philadelphia, and of course, Hartford. Each city offered a different canvas on which he would paint his evolving philosophy of engagement.

Whether curating public programming in Atlanta, directing HIV/AIDS initiatives in D.C., or amplifying Black narratives through nonprofit leadership in Philadelphia, Walker’s work has consistently braided cultural sophistication with fiscal accountability. He is known among colleagues for his meticulous stewardship of budgets, his ability to navigate institutional bureaucracy, and his unwavering belief that the arts are essential—not ancillary—to civic life.

An inveterate learner, Mr. Walker begins each day in ritual: meditation, mindfulness, and global news. He reads The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Economist, and The Guardian, and listens daily to both BBC and NPR broadcasts. He is a student of history and an admirer of philosophy—especially the works of W.E.B. Du Bois and Jean-Paul Sartre. A photo of him at Sartre’s grave in Paris, France, is more than a memento—it is a quiet tribute to the intellectual life he’s committed himself to.

Walker’s travels span the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, South America, and Asia—each journey expanding his lens of arts, representation, and the role of memory in shaping the future. And yet, it is his American journey—from the seed shop of his grandfather to the neon glow of his father’s nightclub—that most vividly grounds his story.

In an era hungry for grounded leadership, Gregory T. Walker offers a rare combination: the strategic foresight of an executive, the curiosity of a scholar, and the heart of a cultural steward. His work is not merely a profession—it is a practice, a philosophy, and a promise to the generations that came before, and those still to come. 

Inspiritaion

Media

Cultural Co-working sparks life in old Philadelphia Building:
Thaddeus Squire puts Culture to work!

Techbook Online
December 13th, 2012, by Christopher “Flood the Drummer” Norris

Now tasting success, Cookie Entrepreneur looks to expand his “dough count”

Techbook Online
June 1st, 2013, by Christopher “Flood the Drummer” Norris