Greg Knowles Reflects on 15 Years of Service as He Steps Down From the Columbia REA Board of Directors

After 5 terms—and leadership roles that included guiding the cooperative through COVID—Knowles says it’s time to hand the work to a new generation, even as he stays busy at the family business he’s built over decades.

When Greg Knowles says he’s “being called a retiree now,” he laughs—but the milestone is real. After about 15 years on the Columbia REA Board of Directors, Knowles is finishing his final meetings this spring before the cooperative elects new directors at the April Annual Meeting. “After that…that’s it for me,” he said.

Knowles served five terms and held leadership positions as secretary, vice president, and president—an assignment that arrived during the uncertainty of the COVID era. Even then, he said, the board’s work stayed rooted in steady planning: managers mapping goals, talking through priorities, and keeping an essential service running for members across the community.

The cooperative, to him, has always felt like a family. But growth has changed the scale of the job. “We’re in an ‘age of electrification,’ so to speak, and Columbia REA is growing, and could grow rapidly,” Knowles said. “So, I feel like it is a good time for a new director to come in and for me to spend more time with my grandchildren and do some traveling.”

Running a small business taught him plenty, he noted, but Columbia REA is “a multimillion-dollar operation,” and decisions can ripple through the whole region. It’s also why his advice to whoever succeeds him is simple: “Jump in and try to learn the business. It’s complex.”

Some of that complexity comes with big, tempting opportunities. Knowles still remembers when a proposed Bitcoin venture surfaced early in his tenure. “To say that concerned me a bit might be an understatement,” he recalls. The effort ultimately fizzled, but the experience left him wary of what the future may hold in terms of maintaining that family feel as Columbia REA takes on larger members and ever-growing challenges within the industry itself.

Retiring from the board doesn’t mean slowing down for Greg. He still helps with the books at the Bicycle Barn, a business that the Knowles family and another couple purchased back in 1985. “My son has moved back to town and will eventually take the reins here at the bike shop, alongside a partner,” shared Greg. “He was on a completely different career path and decided to make a change, so I’m pretty excited about the future of the shop.”

The Bicycle Barn, he said, gave his family an uncommon kind of togetherness: a place where kids did homework after school, and where he could be “the flexible parent” who never missed a game or performance.

Looking back, Knowles calls board service “a real blessing” and says he’s proud of what Columbia REA has accomplished. His hope for the cooperative’s next chapter is that it keeps its community-first identity. “When organizations get big, money has a way of changing things,” he said. For now, he’s content to trade boardroom pressure for the rhythms of everyday life—and to stick around long enough, he added, to watch his grandkids grow up.