For those of us who were faculty members and students at Blue Ridge back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we can look back upon a considerable number of remarkable young men who populated our student body in those days. One of the more notable students who came to our campus was a sophomore from Charlotte, North Carolina, named Greg Headen, who, aside from his energetic pursuit of athletics, proved himself to be a quiet but remarkably effective leader.
His secret to success was that he led by example, which caused his classmates to respect him, and the faculty to entrust Greg with significant leadership roles such as Prefect, Junior class vice-president, Senior class Secretary-Treasurer, editor of the 1981 Challenger yearbook, captain of the JV football team, captain and MVP of JV basketball, and captain of the varsity lacrosse team. He served well in each of these assignments. Yet, it was not just in these capacities that Greg performed well. He took part in the drama department’s productions, where he took on entirely new personas that brought to life characters such as Dickens’ “The Artful Dodger,” who quickly and efficiently perfected the art of picking a pocket or two, as well as performances in “The Hobbit,” and “Li’l Abner.”
But Greg had his sights set on his primary goal. As he put it, “I always had an interest in broadcasting, television, and movies. I loved seeing how they were put together. As a child, I would watch CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt and teach myself how to tell a story through soundbites and video. I knew I would be in news in some capacity starting around age twelve.”
Greg’s first entry into broadcasting came when he joined the news staff of Charlotte, North Carolina’s WBTV, his hometown CBS station. He served as the station’s Assignment Desk Manager from 1996 through 1998. At this point in his career, he went to work for Fox News. By the year 2000, Greg had been promoted to the position of Senior Producer where he coordinated general assignments for Fox News in their Washington, DC bureau through 2007. In that same year, Greg was promoted to Senior Coordinating Producer and had to move up to the Fox News headquarters in New York, where he became the producer of both “Studio B” and “The Fox Report with Shepard Smith” from 2007 through 2011.
Greg’s skills as a producer earned the respect of the top Fox News leadership, and in 2011 they promoted him to the position of Miami Bureau Chief where he was to head up reporting from the southeastern part of America. For three years Greg built up a strong and very professional team of reporters. Then in 2014 Greg was called to return to New York where he was assigned to be the Director of International News for the channel. All the foreign news flowed from Fox’s overseas reporters into Greg’s office and was broadcast throughout America. Then in 2021, Greg’s remarkable professional and leadership skills earned him yet another promotion to Vice President News Coverage for all Fox News Media. This means that Greg will have a hand in all of the network’s news coverage, overseeing both domestic and international assignment desks, which puts him in a position to manage planning and logistics for news coverage around the world.
Over the years at Fox News, Greg has managed news events including two Royal weddings, Pope Francis’ international travel, terror attacks in London, Barcelona, Paris, Nice, Munich, and Istanbul. On the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Greg was in charge of the channel’s coverage of the attack on the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Thereafter, the Fox leadership readily called upon Greg to take charge of the network’s coverage of the War on Terror during attacks on Islamabad, Pakistan and during Operation Iraqi Freedom thereafter in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey.
In his role as one of Fox’s chief producers, Greg has supervised the network’s coverage of hurricanes, mass shootings, two Royal weddings, political conventions, and Presidential elections. He has managed sit-down interviews with Presidents George Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. He has met with world leaders including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Prime Minister of Turkey for an interview in Ankara, Turkey. But, of all of the special televised events Greg has supervised, one stands out in particular as the most memorable. He was traveling with Vice-President Cheney in 2005 as the US Pool Producer to cover the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Nazi prison camp known as Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland. Many world leaders were present and the temperature was bitterly cold. Along with the world leaders was a group of some 600 camp survivors who had come to pay their respects to the thousands who had been brutally slaughtered by Hitler’s murderous guards. It was a profoundly moving experience that remains with Greg to this day.
During his career with Fox News, Greg has traveled the world and met so many interesting people. As he says, “I hope I have made a difference bringing stories that matter to viewers. I remain enthused, appreciative, and honored every day to live my life doing exactly what I want to do. I am blessed.”
