About Doug
Experience
Doug organized for 17 years with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), the nation’s largest and longest-standing network of faith and community-based organizations, including 12 years as Lead Organizer with Central Texas Interfaith, a coalition of 35 congregations, labor unions, schools, and nonprofits across the Central Texas region.
Doug has also served as Chief of Staff to State Rep. Gina Hinojosa and as Director of Programs with Equality California, the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization.
Doug got his start in organizing as a teacher at Johnston High School (now Eastside Early College High School) in East Austin, where he taught for five years after moving to Austin after graduating from Brown University in 1997.
Track Record
Doug Greco was Central to CTI & the Texas IAF’s fight in 2021 to kill the oil and gas industry’s largest corporate tax giveaway program in Texas, Chapter 313, which took $1 Billion/year in potential school funding and gave it to multinational oil and gas companies. Then, when industry groups tried to revive the program in 2023, Doug was central to CTI & Texas IAF’s efforts to substantially reform its replacement to make it more accountable to taxpayers and communities.
During the COVID crisis in 2020, under Doug’s leadership, CTI secured over $40 Million from the City of Austin and Travis County for rental assistance programs, and in 2021 CTI built the political will for the City and County to invest over $200 million in COVID funds to address the homelessness crisis in Austin.
Doug worked with CTI to win tens of millions in funding for long-term job training dollars for living wage jobs from Austin and Travis County and was instrumental in the Texas IAF’s efforts to create a $10 million matching fund at the Texas Legislature.
As Director of Programs at Equality California in 2015-16, Doug led efforts to develop and implement programs to address health disparities for LGBTQ undocumented immigrants in the Central Valley.
As a Chief of Staff during the 2017 Texas Legislative Session, Doug worked against the “Bathroom Bill” and the anti-immigrant SB4.
Doug covered the marriage equality movement as a writer for Frontiers Magazine, and his 2023 book “To Find a Killer” lays out an organizing vision for the next phase of the LGBTQ rights movement through analyzing the tragic 2017 anti-LGBTQ murder of one of his former high school students in Dove Springs in Southeast Austin.
Education
Doug holds a Bachelor’s in Economics from Brown University, a Master’s in Public Policy from Princeton, and a Masters in creative writing from the University of Southern California.
Background
Doug grew up in the Anthracite Coal Region town of Mt. Carmel in Eastern Pennsylvania, an experience he chronicles in his blog, The Yellow Pig.
Doug was a member of both Education Austin and Texas State Employees Union in previous roles.
Doug loves playing third base with the Austin Ball’rz of Softball Austin, our city’s LGBTQ softball league. He also enjoys hiking, writing, and spending time with his family as well as his family of friends in Austin.
