Remembering Professor Virginia “Ginny” Greiman (SED’70, LAW’03)
Greiman helped plan mega projects, including Boston’s Big Dig.
Remembering Professor Virginia “Ginny” Greiman (SED’70, LAW’03)
Greiman helped plan mega projects, including Boston’s Big Dig.
Virginia “Ginny” Greiman (SED’70, LAW’03), a former deputy chief counsel of Boston’s Big Dig project, an expert in international development who consulted with global institutions such as the World Bank, and a longtime lecturer at Boston University School of Law, died on November 15 after a battle with cancer.
Greiman also shared her expertise in her roles as an assistant professor of administrative sciences at BU’s Metropolitan College and as a faculty associate at the Pardee School of Global Studies. She was an internationally recognized authority on mega-project management and infrastructure development. In addition to her work on the more than $14 billion Big Dig—which relocated major interstate highways underneath Boston and included construction of the Ted Williams Tunnel, the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway—she advised on London’s Crossrail project and other mega projects in India, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
“Ginny brought a wealth of expertise to our students,” said Angela Onwuachi-Willig, BU Law’s Dean and Ryan Roth Gallo Professor of Law. “Ginny forever changed the landscape of Boston through her role as deputy chief counsel and risk manager for the Big Dig. Her work was truly remarkable, and she was a remarkable woman and lawyer. We are grateful to have learned from Ginny, and we will miss her presence in and the deep impact she made on our community at BU Law.”
Greiman joined BU Law as a lecturer in 2003, having previously taught at Georgetown University Law Center, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Oxford University.
At BU Law, her courses included International Business Agreements and International Project Finance. At the Metropolitan College, she was an instructor in the school’s project management core curriculum, teaching classes such as Portfolio and Program Management, and Business Law and Regulation in a Global Environment.
“Ginny contributed great depth to the development of MET’s project management graduate programs,” said MET Dean Tanya Zlateva. “She believed that to be an effective teacher, you had to excite the students and share the passion you had for the subject. It was her commitment to bringing knowledge to life using firsthand experience, and her love of helping learners find new perspectives, that brought her to BU.”
Prior to her teaching career, Greiman served in the US Department of Justice, including as a US trustee overseeing bankruptcy proceedings. In that role, she managed successful reorganizations including the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire. She also worked as general counsel for Boston’s then-Department of Banking and Insurance and the city’s Executive Office of Education. From 1995 to 2000, she was international legal counsel to the US Department of State, the US Agency for International Development, the US Trade and Development Agency, and the World Bank, among other international entities.
On campus, she was a valued teacher and colleague.
“Ginny had a heart for students as well as an entrepreneurial spirit on scholarship,” says BU Law’s Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law Kevin Outterson, executive director of CARB-X. “She reached out to me within months of my arrival here and helped me to globalize my teaching and scholarship. Never heard an unkind word from Ginny.”
Greiman completed her undergraduate degree at Pennsylvania State University before obtaining a master of education from Boston University in 1970. She earned her JD from Suffolk Law School and, in 2003, returned to BU to earn her LLM in taxation at BU Law. A certified Project Management Professional, she published and lectured extensively on international law, economic development, project management and finance, and international business finance.
She authored several books, including Mega Project Management: Lessons on Risk and Project Management from the Big Dig in 2013. The nearly 500-page resource describes day-to-day management of the project based on her experiences as deputy chief legal counsel and risk manager between 1998 and 2005.
She brought those experiences to the classroom as well, telling Metropolitan magazine in 2012, “I want to make sure our students are well trained to manage difficult decisions when faced with projects.”
Greiman was a district-level delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention for Massachusetts. She served as an executive member of the Wellesley Republican Town Committee and as vice chair of the Massachusetts Lawyers for Trump group. Despite her failing health, she traveled to Milwaukee for the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
