as his career.
He reads extensively and can spend half a day with a book when he has the time. He still enjoys gardening, despite his admitted lack of natural talent. He attends his three children’ s swim meets and practices. He is a movie buff who prefers to read the book before seeing its film adaptation. And then there’ s the guitar, a skill he’ s been fine tuning for 30 years.
“ I have no natural ability,” he joked.“ But I just do it because it’ s fun and different. I play every night.”
That willingness to keep doing things simply because they are enjoyable seems to be characteristic of Dr. Grill. Whether learning to dive, learning medicine, learning guitar or creating a pizza seasoning from homegrown peppers, he appears less interested in being perfect than in being engaged. The same is true of his approach to leadership.
“ I think being able to build a team, work within it and trust the people, those skills are hugely important in medicine,” he said.
It is a lesson he learned in some of the most demanding environments imaginable, but one that has found its most meaningful expression in a children’ s hospital.
The Navy taught him that teammates have your back. Medicine has shown him why that matters.
And whether he is standing beside a hospital bed, teaching a resident, reassuring a worried parent or sprinkling The Pizza Doctor seasoning onto a slice with his family, the philosophy remains remarkably consistent: nobody gets across the finish line alone.
Kathryn Vance is the Communications Manager at the Greater Louisville Medical Society.
He never wanted to be the physician who had to be the smartest person in the room. Early in his career, someone suggested that becoming a physician meant becoming the leader of the healthcare team. That idea appealed to him. Not because leadership meant having all the answers. But instead, because it meant helping a group of people work together. Years later, that remains one of the most rewarding parts of his career.
October 2026 37