Oregon Coast CC names new director of small business center

The Small Business Development Center at Oregon Coast Community College has named a Lincoln County native its new director.

Gregory Price of The Dalles is taking the reins at its business advisory center from Dave Price, the college’s vice president of engagement. The two men are not related.

The new director grew up in Depoe Bay and graduated from Taft High School in Lincoln City. He’s worked in business development for two decades, including starting and eventually selling his own enterprise. He holds a master’s in business administration from Portland State University and has taught in that university’s Graduate School of Business.

Gregory Price has been the small business development center at Columbia Gorge Community College in The Dalles since January 2020, and will share that role at both colleges.

“I believe we’ve already found areas where shared resources from one center to the other will make both stronger,” former director and current vice president Dave Price told YachatsNews.  Among those are spring workshops featuring QuickBooks and Excel and three business workshops to be delivered in-person and in Spanish at OCCC.

“We’ll also be saving some of the costs of having a full-time director, and thus he’s now recruiting for additional business advisors to join our team, investing those resources not in administration, but in boots-on-the-ground service to Lincoln County businesses,” Dave Price said.

Dave Price said he’d been recruiting for the position for months when he attended a conference in Bend and was “as usual” impressed with his soon-to-be successor’s work in The Dalles, particularly his success with Spanish-language programming.

“His innovative style and his coastal roots just shouted ‘give this a try,’” Dave Price said.

He said the transition process is underway and the new director has hit the ground running, scheduling a new lineup of courses and starting a “whirlwind tour” to meet area leaders. Dave Price added that he hasn’t lost his own passion for small business and would still be involved with the center.

In a college news release, Gregor Price said he got special fulfillment from being in service to rural communities. Outside of his new employment, he already spends summers with his family in Lincoln County.