Greg Betley

Greg Betley earned an undergraduate degree in management from MIT and later pursued graduate studies in social psychology. Greg worked as a programmer and senior technical specialist for numerous prestigious high tech companies. When his company downsized he started to think of all of the possibilities that lie ahead.

“I was not old enough to retire but old enough not to want the daily pressure,” he said.

Greg attended a ReServe event in Boston in January 2013 and signed on. His first ReServist placement was with Hearth, a Boston nonprofit where he used his considerable skills to lead the design and implementation of a case management database.

After five months at Hearth, Greg was offered a placement with St. Mary’s Center for Women and Children in Boston in the fall of 2013. “We had an archaic system that was always breaking down and had a lot of inefficiencies,” said Deirdre Houtmeyers, President of St Mary’s. A St. Mary’s board member put together a volunteer team of experts to assess the agency’s IT infrastructure. The team came up with a 40-page strategic plan. The agency posted a job description with ReServe and Greg was the ideal candidate.

Greg spent almost a year upgrading IT systems and implementing the strategic plan. He negotiated new PC purchases, changed desktops from Windows XP to Windows 7, migrated mail and files services to Office 365, and lowered the agency’s costs by setting up an internal team to provide IT services. He reduced monthly phone bills by over a third by eliminating unused lines, influenced St. Mary’s strategic partners to provide pro-bono IT services, established best practices and documentation standards for trouble ticketing and asset management, and implemented a second learning lab for students.

ReServe is a win-win for everyone, Greg said. ReServists keep their skills sharp while giving back to organizations like St. Mary’s, which benefit from the skills and commitment of ReServists.