‘Succeeding Together’
Gregory Lynch may have many of the hallmarks of a chowdah-loving New Englander, but he’s first and foremost the glue of CFGI’s San Francisco office.
Since 2017, Greg has been leading CFGI’s growth in the Bay Area, which includes business-development efforts, building a team of experts capable of serving the market’s needs and delivering service to our clients.
That’s no small feat. San Francisco is essential to CFGI’s growth and ongoing success.
But so is Greg. CFGI and its Bay Area clients can rest easy knowing they are in the best of hands with Greg and the growing team.
From the Bay State to the Bay Area
Greg grew up in the Boston suburbs, attended college in Vermont and began his professional career in Boston. On weekends, you still might find him outdoors with his wife and children somewhere between the mountain ski slopes and the ocean coves.
“These activities are our stress relievers – our happy places,” Greg said.
He spent the first part of his career in the Boston area, which included public accounting as an auditor before entering the industry and, eventually, joining the ranks of CFGI.
In fact, when Greg first came to CFGI, it was in 2008 as a manager.
“I had experience with multiple professional-service organizations as well as industry experience early in my career,” Greg said. “This helped me realize early on that I really like professional services, and you need that enthusiasm to have the energy and drive to be successful at CFGI.”
And successful he has been.
By 2017, CFGI’s headcount – which was about 25 when Greg started back in 2008 – had grown to over 100 employees. For his part, Greg had risen through the ranks to become managing director.
It wasn’t just the firm’s headcount that was expanding, though. Like Greg, CFGI is Boston born and raised. And also like Greg, the company was ready for the next milestone: establishing a permanent presence on the West Coast.
“I came to San Francisco to support a client project,” Greg said. “And it was clear that we could use that as a stepping stone to learn about the market here. The same market activity that drives our practice in Boston, New York and several other cities is here in spades.”
So began Greg’s migration from the Bay State to the Bay Area. He headed west, where his depth and breadth of experience qualified him to act as the leader for the San Francisco office where the firm began hiring in 2017 to support its growth.
Forging ahead together
A lot has changed since 2017. CFGI is now a portfolio company of The Carlyle Group and has more than 500 employees across offices in Boston, New York, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Charlotte, Dallas and of course, San Francisco.
And Greg is doubling down on efforts to grow the company’s presence in San Francisco. In addition to a quickly growing headcount of professionals, Greg is also supported by CFGI’s most recent senior hire, Brian Powell, who joined CFGI as a Partner in San Francisco after having served more than 20 years in Big-4 accounting-advisory, working for many of the regions top technology companies. Plus, his West Coast roots help bring his understanding of what it means to call the Bay Area “home” to our team.
“We’ve been in the Bay Area for the past three years building off of that initial client project,” Greg said. “We’re introducing ourselves across the market, winning projects, delivering high-quality work and, through that, expanding. At first, we had to introduce ourselves, but now, the market knows who we are, and our standing as the nation’s largest non-audit accounting-advisory firm and having a partnership with The Carlyle Group, help us stand out.”
According to Greg, CFGI works with 1000’s nationwide and the San Francisco office wins 1-2 new clients each week.
In order to get there, though, it takes a team effort, and Greg will be the first to stress that no single person’s role is more important than another’s.
“It’s not necessarily the people who have been here the longest that have the loudest voice,” Greg said. “We have created a democracy of sorts that makes an impact on the practice, and that is not something that happens everywhere.”
“We’ve been able to grow our team and the breadth of our capabilities, in large part, because we have a culture that encourages everyone to collaborate and bounce ideas off of each other,” he added. “We work together and challenge each other to think about how we’re helping our clients and how we’re creating the environment within our practice to allow our team members to grow their careers.”
All of that having been said, Greg has made the occasional unpopular executive decision.
“We have a New England Patriots refrigerator in our office,” he admitted. “I like to believe the gift was intended to honor the locally born quarterback that found his success playing in New England.”
Still, San Francisco is lucky to have someone like Greg, even if his sports alliances haven’t yet transferred.
And besides, there’s still plenty of time for that as Greg and the team work to be the Bay Area’s preeminent accounting and finance advisory firm, one project at a time.