Meet Our Founder Gregory E. Markomanolakis

A Life Forged by Faith, Resilience, and Purpose

"I didn't build The Statesman's Forum because I had all the answers. I built it because I kept asking the right questions—and I needed men around me who were asking them too."

Every Brotherhood Has a Beginning

Gregory E. Markomanolakis is the son of first-generation Greek immigrants who came to America seeking opportunity and a better future for their family. Although he now calls Delaware's Eastern Shore home, his roots run deep in Southern Maryland, where the foundations of resilience, integrity, and purpose were first formed.

His early years were not easy.

Greg grew up as an only child in a broken home. His father was present at times but was not a reliable influence during much of his childhood, and his mother struggled with significant health challenges. Although they loved him in the ways they knew how, Greg grew up carrying a deep sense of loneliness, insecurity, and uncertainty about his own identity.

One memory has remained with him throughout his life.

As a young boy, Greg often visited a friend's home. There he witnessed something he longed for—a stable family, a loving father, genuine peace, and the security that comes from a healthy home. He remembers quietly wondering why his own family could not experience that same harmony.

That experience planted a question in his heart that would remain for years.

God designed children to flourish under the loving influence of both a father and a mother. While countless mothers faithfully carry extraordinary burdens with courage and sacrifice, Greg experienced firsthand how profoundly a father's presence shapes the confidence, identity, and spiritual direction of a young man.

Rather than allowing hardship to define him, Gregory chose to let God use it to refine him.

Looking back, he now recognizes that the Lord was preparing him long before he understood the assignment.

The longing he felt as a young boy would one day become the vision behind The Statesman's Forum.

Searching for What Was Missing

At the age of thirteen, Greg accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior.

Yet after that decision, he received very little biblical discipleship. Without mature believers investing in his spiritual growth, his relationship with Christ gradually faded into the background, and during his teenage years he drifted far from the Lord.

Growing up during the cultural revolution of the 1970s, he found himself surrounded by messages celebrating moral freedom and self-indulgence. Pornography was readily available. Sexual immorality, alcohol, and marijuana became attempts to fill the emptiness within.

Like so many young men, Greg searched for acceptance, identity, significance, and purpose in all the wrong places.

Nothing satisfied.

Nothing healed the loneliness.

Nothing removed the emptiness.

Looking back, Greg realizes he was not merely searching for pleasure.

He was searching for significance.

He was searching for identity.

Ultimately, he was searching for Christ.

Grace Found Me

Then God brought Christy into his life.

Their stories mirrored one another in many ways. Both understood brokenness, uncertainty, and the desire for something more. Their early years together were anything but easy. As a young couple facing an unexpected pregnancy and without the support of their respective families, they encountered challenges that could easily have overwhelmed them.

Instead, those struggles became the beginning of God's redemptive work.

As Christy embraced Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, Greg recommitted his own life to the Lord. Together they discovered not only forgiveness but an entirely new direction.

A faithful pastor invested in them.

A loving church family embraced them.

For the first time, they experienced genuine biblical discipleship, accountability, and the encouragement of Christian community.

Rather than allowing their circumstances to determine their future, they chose to build their lives upon Christ.

They were married and committed themselves to honoring God by establishing a home founded on faith instead of fear.

Looking back, Gregory often says that surrendering his life completely to Jesus Christ was the greatest decision he ever made.

Marrying Christy was the second.

Jesus did not simply change Gregory's circumstances.

He changed Gregory himself.

The loneliness gave way to belonging.

The insecurity gave way to identity.

The striving gave way to purpose.

And the burdens that once seemed unbearable were now carried in the hands of a faithful Savior.

That transformation became the foundation upon which every chapter of his life—and eventually The Statesman's Forum—would be built.

Building the Structure

For more than thirty years, Gregory owned and operated a successful general contracting business.

Day after day, he built homes, businesses, and places where families would live, work, and build their futures.

But while Gregory was constructing physical structures with his hands, God was quietly constructing something far greater within him.

Every challenge became another stone laid.

Every disappointment strengthened the foundation.

Every success taught stewardship rather than pride.

Every failure deepened humility and dependence upon the Lord.

The demands of business ownership, marriage, raising children, and navigating life's unexpected trials became God's blueprint for shaping a man whose greatest work would not be measured in buildings, but in lives transformed through discipleship.

Gregory often reflects that every lasting structure depends upon its foundation.

The same is true of a man's life.

Without Christ as the cornerstone, no amount of success can withstand the storms that inevitably come.

Looking back, he now sees that the Lord was not merely teaching him how to build structures.

He was building a Statesman.

A Legacy That Starts at Home

Today, Gregory has been married to his wife, Christy, for forty-seven years.

Together they have raised five children, celebrated twelve grandchildren, and now enjoy the blessing of one great-grandson.

These milestones are more than numbers.

They represent a legacy of God's faithfulness and the fruit of lives committed to Christ, covenant, perseverance, and the belief that life's greatest investments are made in God, family, and the people He entrusts to our care.

Why The Statesman's Forum Exists

Over the years, Gregory noticed a common problem.

Too many men were drifting.

Not because they lacked intelligence.

Not because they lacked talent.

But because they lacked biblical brotherhood.

Many had never been challenged to ask life's deepest questions:

• Who has God created me to be?

• What gifts has He entrusted to me?

• How am I faithfully stewarding those gifts for His glory?

Gregory realized he wasn't the only man searching for those answers.

He needed other men beside him.

Men who would sharpen one another.

Encourage one another.

Pray together.

Hold one another accountable.

Gregory does not speak about the darkest chapters of his life to glorify his past or dwell on his failures.

He shares them because too many men are fighting the very same battles in silence.

Behind successful careers, smiling faces, and outward appearances are hidden wounds, secret addictions, fear, loneliness, and men desperately searching for identity and purpose.

Greg knows that struggle because he lived it.

Without Christ, he searched for acceptance, identity, and significance in places that could never satisfy.

But Jesus Christ pursued him with grace, forgave his sin, restored his life, redeemed his marriage, and transformed his future.

If Christ could redeem my life, He can redeem yours as well.

That conviction became The Statesman's Forum.

Not simply another Bible study.

Not simply another men's meeting.

But a brotherhood where men are reached by the Gospel, rooted in their God-given identity, and released to faithfully lead their families, churches, workplaces, communities, and public life.

Every man has been entrusted by God with gifts, opportunities, influence, and a calling.

One day, each of us will give an account for how faithfully we stewarded those gifts.

The Statesman's Forum exists to help men finish that race faithfully.

Looking Ahead

What began with four men gathering faithfully in Georgetown, Delaware, has become a vision reaching far beyond one town or one state.

Gregory believes God is raising a generation of men who will strengthen families, mentor younger believers, lead with integrity, disciple future generations, and help restore biblical manhood throughout America.

One man.

One brotherhood.

One city at a time.

"The work isn't about me. If my story encourages even one man to stop drifting and start answering God's call on his life, then every difficult season was worth it. The goal has never been to build my legacy. The goal has always been to point men toward Christ and help them become the men He created them to be."

— Gregory E. Markomanolakis