Trevor Greene has lived in Howard County for basically his entire life, and when he found a passion for dentistry in college, it brought him back to the area.
Greene eventually started his own practice, Piney Orchard Dental, in 2010, and has spent the last 15 years building it up.
Greene has also been heavily involved in the local Jewish community, especially after Oct. 7, as he started the Howard County Jewish Advocacy nonprofit group in April 2024 to combat the rising antisemitism in the area through nonpartisan political action.
Greene lives in Columbia and is a member of Beth Shalom Congregation.
When did you find your passion for dentistry?
I went to the University of Maryland College Park, and I started off as a journalism major, realized that wasn’t for me, switched to a chemical engineering major and realized that wasn’t for me. And then the summer after sophomore year, I went to my orthodontist, Dr. Jeffrey Miller of Orthodontic Associates, and Dr. Miller offered me a summer job.
I thought I’d go in there and start filing papers or doing things like that. [But on] my first day, Dr. Miller points to a patient and says, ‘OK, I want you to change the wires on that patient.’ And I looked at him and said, ‘I think we have a misunderstanding here.’ And he goes, ‘You’ll be fine. I’ll stand over your shoulder. I make sure everything’s fine.’
And I saw that first patient, and I saw a second patient, and I worked for Dr. Miller for the rest of college. He was an incredible mentor to me and really inspired me. And I said, ‘OK, this is me. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’
What has the journey been like for you to create a practice from scratch?
I worked for a couple other dentists after graduating from the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, and I said I want to set out and start my own business. So I researched. I didn’t just start practicing. I thought, where’s an area where there’s a need for dentistry? And I found an area called Piney Orchard in Odenton, Maryland, that definitely had a need of really good dental care.
And I said, not only that, but I want my practice to be unique. I really want to provide the type of dentistry that is exceptional. So I looked at other businesses and I said, what do other businesses do that people usually don’t like, but there’s certain businesses that people really like, and I want to emulate that. A lot of people don’t like going to the dentist, so I wanted to make it a more pleasant experience.
What was it like to start the Howard County Jewish Advocacy group?
Oct. 7, 2023, was a major turning point for American Jews and Jews worldwide. I’ve always been involved in giving back even before Oct. 7, but not necessarily to Jewish causes. And then Oct. 7 happened, and very quickly we saw a massive rise in antisemitism in Howard County.
Even before Oct. 7, Jews were most likely of anyone to be victims of a hate crime. And after Oct. 7, the rates shot through the roof. After Oct. 7, it hurt because it felt to me like many of those same groups and leaders that we supported either abandoned us or unfortunately were somewhat outright hostile to us, and that was true in Howard County.
Also because we saw some of our political leaders either stay silent in the face of the hate we were confronting or even outright supporting the hate. And I said, ‘OK, we the Jewish people, we need to step up and speak out about this.’ We realized if we the Jewish people of Howard County don’t stand up to protect ourselves, no one else is going to do it for us.
What was behind the decision to make the nonprofit a 504(c) to be involved in politics?
We created HoCoJAG to be unique because we saw something missing. We saw that there weren’t any Jewish organizations working on a local level with direct political action, finding candidates to support, endorsing candidates and helping candidates who understand the Jewish people and understand antisemitism win their races so that they can protect us.
[Also] we’re explicitly nonpartisan. We now understand that antisemitism comes from the political extremes on both sides. It comes from the far left and the far right, and the only way we’re going to defeat antisemitism is by having the support of leaders on both sides of the political aisle.
How has your life changed since starting HocoJAG?
What I feel is, as an individual, we feel powerless, and it’s stressful and scary to see the Jew hate rise in our community and to know that as individuals, sometimes we’re unable to do anything to help.
But after starting HoCoJAG and realizing that with a little bit of effort and people coming together, our voices are multiplied and magnified … I’ve learned that the uplifting feeling of joining HocoJAG and seeing our combined efforts make real and true progress towards keeping our family safe is profoundly empowering. It feels really good to be able to actually do something rather than complaining about problems and being afraid.
How has your Jewish identity impacted your life?
The Baltimore Jewish community has been incredibly important my entire life. My mom, Gloria Greene, was a writer. She wrote for the food section of the Baltimore Jewish Times, and she also published one of the original comprehensive Jewish cookbooks. It’s called the “Jewish Holiday Cookbook,” and in that book, she cataloged the stories of Jewish cooking from around the world. That taught us how important it is to appreciate our Jewish culture.
When [my wife and I] got married, we moved right back to Columbia and Howard County, and we continued our Jewish life. And now we have two boys. We are members of Beth Shalom again, and we’re trying to instill those same values in our kids. We want them to be really proud of being Jewish. I have a good friend who likes to use the term pro-Semitism. We want them to be really proud of who they are, and we want to instill those values in them.
