“Character and Leadership”:
Head of School Terry Grigsby calls upon lessons learned as a Principia student and naval officer

Character and competitiveness

For CedarS Camps Executive Director Emeritus Warren Huff (US’68), who first met Grigsby as a scrawny-legged grade-schooler in shorts and cowboy boots, it was the moment a teenage Grigsby saved a ski boat. Huff had forgotten to put in the hull drain plug as he was backing the boat into the lake; Grigsby confidently “whoa!-whoa!-whoa!”ed his boss to keep the boat from taking on water. 

It was an early glimpse of the alert and responsible young man who would go on to wear a Navy commander’s dress whites.

For Bob Beeman (C’76), Grigsby’s Principia College basketball coach, the memory of the young man who was first to practice and last out of the gym still visibly chokes him up. “He was our hardest worker,” explains Beeman, adding that it “was a character and leadership decision” to always put Grigsby in the starting line-up. He understood how to mobilize the team, “a we guy, not a me guy,” says Beeman, remembering Grigsby even offering to sit on the bench to get what he considered a better player out on the court.

In pursuit of a “best self”

That same we guy stepped in as head of school last fall, after three years overseeing substantial admissions growth as assistant head of school. A graduate of Principia School and College, Grigsby has a diverse background: from experience in financial services to a 20-year Navy leadership career, gathering along the way deep cultural experience working in Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean, and earning two master’s degrees—one in procurement and acquisition, and another in national security and foreign affairs.

“I’m not a credentialed academic teacher,” Grigsby acknowledges. “I’m a character educator.”  

“Mission success” in any organization, including a private pre-K–12 school, relies on the discernment of your team’s skills and the ability to lead them, he asserts. From camp counselor to military leader, Grigsby built broadly transferable skills in managing people, social dynamics, and finding that balance between nurturing and challenging. 

“I’ve been able to work in environments where I haven’t necessarily had the exact skill set,” he says, “but you know the ability of the people you have working for you and then you’re able to drive everybody to be their best selves.”

Principia’s leadership-focused choice of a naval commander to lead the School is strategically intriguing, says Retired U.S. Navy Commander Torkel Patterson, who mentored Grigsby on the decision to enter the military. 

Grigsby rose as a naval logistics expert to the role of deputy division chief of the Global Defense Transportation Command. “That’s a big job,” says Patterson, noting logistics is the most “under-understood” role in the Navy and widely considered a key to winning wars. 

Successfully juggling the complexities of billion-dollar budgets, payroll, acquisition, and distribution of food, fuel, equipment, and maintenance makes Grigsby a formidable manager, but human interaction is another thing. Patterson describes Grigsby as a “disarming, natural bridge builder,” a skill hard-won through Grigsby’s experience negotiating all kinds of human interactions—from Principia to the military to the business world.

Patterson echoes a recurring description of Grigsby as skilled at interpersonal relationships, entering a room with a touch of humor when needed or drilling down with empathetic inquiry.

Principia Chief Executive Barbara Blackwell (HON’22) sees Grigsby’s “strong leadership skills, proven management expertise, exceptional strength of character, and drive for learning” as not just transferable but essential to maintaining and continuously improving the School. “Terry’s journey demonstrates the power and promise of Principia’s whole-person education,” she says.

Achieving “mission success”

It surprises Grigsby to be labeled naturally empathetic. He considers his de facto leadership style—whether on the basketball court, teaching archery at camp, managing supply chains on naval ships, or helping faculty meet goals—more about the logistics of team-building for the win; that is, to intuitively support a team in achieving “mission success.”

Guiding his work as head of school, Grigsby says, is Mary Baker Eddy’s definition of education: “The entire purpose of true education is to make one not only know the truth but live it — to make one enjoy doing right, make one not work in the sunshine and run away in the storm, but work midst clouds of wrong, injustice, envy, hate; and wait on God, the strong deliverer, who will reward righteousness and punish iniquity” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 252).

As the School’s tone-setter-in-chief, Grigsby sees his job as helping to “curate a spiritually infused culture” at Principia—intentionally extracting the timeless lessons of Jesus, the disciples, and Old Testament patriarchs, and getting those concepts in front of students. 

The value of “boldly and proudly” offering this framework is clear, he says, as increasing numbers of students of other faiths are drawn to apply. And he notes how that attraction, in turn, serves the Cause of Christian Science by spreading its values widely.

These values have impressed Volodymyr Hrimov (US’25, C’29), a Ukrainian Orthodox student who came to Principia School three years ago and is now a freshman at Principia College. Hrimov, who now identifies as a Christian Scientist, spends holidays in the Grigsby home and specifically appreciates that Grigsby’s embrace goes beyond the Christian Science social bubble “where we all feel safe.”

 

Character shaped by coaches

Grigsby was raised until age 10 by his great-grandmother, Gwendolyn, who he says, “bought into the whole-person concept” and had a plan: focus his life on education and faith and find a Christian Science family to continue that when she could no longer care for him. The plan worked—but the young man had his own work to do.

Coming from a marginalized community, there were academic deficits to overcome, and because his great-grandmother steered him away from sports, which she felt was too often an identity substitute for achievement for African-Americans, he had no experience handling balls or understanding rules. Ironically, it was Principia’s sports programs that provided pathways of discipline and social connections. 

“I wanted to play on these teams,” Grigsby reflects. “I loved the coaches. I loved the players. And I knew to have exposure to [them], I needed to work harder than everybody else to get a seat at the table.” 

“When coaches said this is what you need to do to be successful, then I just did it,” he says.

Coaches continue to shape his life today. Grigsby’s wife, Sarah (Jarvis) Grigsby (C’07), is a coach and PE teacher at the School, as well as a standout long-distance runner and mother of their two daughters. She recognizes how Principia molded her husband into a man of integrity, guided by the Golden Rule—at home and at school. Sarah adds that his character was built on a foundation laid by his great-grandmother, and reinforced by “the rock of love, accountability, and spiritual support” from his adoptive parents Cathy (Brantingham) Tinsley and Doug McClelland.

Reflecting on Grigsby’s character-focused approach and integrity-centered leadership, Blackwell calls him “a selfless, devoted leader who has been willing to step in at a moment’s notice to uplift our students and programs.” 

“We are blessed beyond measure,” she says.