BOB GRECZYN: After leading an HMO's rapid growth, the East Carolina University grad helped expand Blue Cross' dominance in N.C. health insurance.

• Author: Infanzon, Vanessa

Few people have had a bigger impact on North Carolina's health insurance industry in recent decades than Robert Greczyn (pronounced Grech-en). He helped start companies, served as CEO of the state's biggest insurer and is a longtime director at the largest hospital system in eastern North Carolina.

Born and raised in Hightstown, New Jersey, Greczyn moved to Greenville in 1969 to pursue a psychology degree at East Carolina University. He earned a graduate degree in public health from UNC Chapel Hill in 1981, which he says was a way to honor his mothers legacy as a nurse. She died while he was in college.

In 1979, a community health group in Anson County hired Greczyn to start a medical clinic and recruit doctors and dentists to the rural area. In 1984, he became associate director of an HMO startup based in Cary. A larger HMO, Principal Health Care, then recruited him to lead its business in Delaware, where he spent four years.

By 1990, he came back to the Triangle as CEO of Carolina Physicians Health Plan. During his tenure, the physician-owned company grew from 30,000 members to nearly 300,000. Revenue increased from $30 million to $360 million, attracting a buyout in 1996 from larger insurer Healthsource, which was then acquired a year later by Cigna.

In 1998, he joined Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, where he became president in 1999 and CEO in 2000. The company had lost a combined $180 million in the previous five years. Over the next decade, annual revenue more than tripled to $5.2 billion and membership nearly doubled to 3.7 million.

After retiring in 2010, he partnered with his oldest son, Will Greczyn, to purchase six Mellow Mushroom restaurants in North Carolina. He also owns a stake in Fortnight Brewing, which has pubs in Cary and Wake Forest.

Greczyn, 71, is vice chair of the ECU Health Board, which was created this year through a combination of the former Vidant Health and East Carolina's medical school.

Greczyn and his wife, Kristen, have been married for 27 years and live in Cary. He flies single-engine planes, races sports cars and enjoys their home on Smith Mountain Lake in Bedford County, Virginia.

Comments are edited for length and clarity.

My favorite job was Blue Cross. I was given the opportunity to change it, to make it better, to work with an incredible group of leaders and colleagues--to create something special. You don't get many opportunities in your life to do something truly special.

When I got to Blue...