Gregory R. Steffon

As AIG’s Business Development Director for the Northeast region, Steffon cites his Albanian pride as the source of his success. 

Gregory Steffon was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, but grew up in its suburb, Auburn. He lived in a lower-middle class neighborhood, where most families lived paycheck to paycheck. Nobody had much money. “For summer fun, we splashed each other with the hose or sprinkler, and our vacations would be to go to Cape Cod for a week, if we were lucky,” Steffon says. “I really grew up as the typical American, participating in Little League, Cub Scouts, and our Albanian church’s youth group.” As a kid, sports were Steffon’s life. He played football in the fall, basketball and street hockey in the winter, and baseball in the spring and summer. You didn’t have to specialize in one thing, as he says, you played them all. That, and you always had pride in your ethnicity. Steffon’s paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States in the early 1920s from Drenova, Korçë, settling in Worcester, Massachusetts, while his maternal grandparents arrived around the same time from Vithkuq, Korçë, settling in Southbridge, Massachusetts. While they left  their land behind, they didn’t abandon their culture, he says.