Chere Gregory is a physician, executive leader and health equity strategist whose path to coaching is rooted in a lifetime of service, purpose and becoming. Long before she called herself a coach, she was learning how to stand steady in the complexity of leadership — in restaurants, hospitals, boardrooms, family life and the quiet moments when a person must decide who they are becoming next.

Before medical school, Chere earned her master's degree in health finance and management and began her career in the quick-service restaurant industry. It was demanding, fast-moving work that taught her how to lead people under pressure, listen beyond the surface and understand that every team member brings a whole life into the room. She later completed an Administrative Residency under the Senior Vice President of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine medical group, where she saw executive leadership up close inside a nationally respected academic medical setting.

Over the next 25 years, Chere built a career in medicine that grew alongside her leadership. She rose through increasing levels of responsibility, serving as Chief Health Equity Officer within a large, multi-state regional healthcare system serving millions of patients across the Southeast. She knows what it is to carry meaningful work, visible leadership, personal responsibility and family life at the same time — and to keep asking deeper questions about purpose, identity and impact along the way.

As a Co-Active trained coach, Chere believes people are not problems to be solved. They are whole, creative, capable human beings who sometimes need space, reflection, challenge and support to hear their own truth more clearly. Her coaching is both grounded and spacious — practical enough for real life and deep enough to honor the whole person.

MJ Phoenix Partners was born from that same belief in rising with meaning. "MJ" honors Mary and Joyce — Chere's grandmother and mother — whose love, resilience, faith and steadiness came before her. The phoenix honors the part of every life that must rise, not by forgetting what came before, but by carrying it forward in a new form.

Chere coaches executives, leaders and dreamers who are navigating change, success, uncertainty or the quiet ache of knowing there is more. She brings clinical experience, executive perspective, cultural awareness and a deep respect for each client's lived experience. Her work is an invitation to pause, listen, choose and rise with clarity.