“We have the opportunity to take what we do [well] here and carry it to other regions of Puget Sound,” he said. “We think there is lots of future for this credit union in the Puget Sound region.”
Gregg, in fact, came to work for KCU because he saw its potential. “I could see the opportunities for the credit union, and for me to be part of it,” he said. “What I saw was a strong history of growth and that it had a very good financial footing.”

The credit union had $360 million in assets at the time — which Gregg called “a very good size”; now it’s nearing $700 million. It serves more than 70,000 members and has 15 branches as well as a student financial center inside Bremerton High School.

One of the changes that occurred under Gregg’s leadership was the introduction of indirect lending — working with the local car dealerships to provide loans on the spot. The program has been in place for more than five years, and currently the credit union has more than $300 million in auto loans.

Gregg says he firmly believes in Kitsap Credit Union being an important part of the community by giving back, both through financial contributions and volunteer time. He recounts one of his most memorable personal examples of such good will, when his staff came up with the idea to raise money for United Way by selling duct tape strips to “tape” him to the wall. “I was willing,” he said. “The entire credit union was on the phone one Tuesday morning; for $1 you could buy one foot of duct tape. They put me on a crate against the wall, and they sold 1,400 strips. They took the crate away and I was dangling from the wall.”

KCU was also a key player in the revitalization of downtown Bremerton, constructing its new headquarters building right across the street from the Harborside Conference Center. It was one of the first private sector developments in the Harborside District and the rounded, copper-colored dome that dominates the building’s design has become a local landmark.

Gregg came to Kitsap Credit Union after working on both the credit union and bank sides. He had previously “visited” Puget Sound for his Army basic training at Fort Lewis, where he “got to crawl around in the mud” a lot. Not only was a career in banking not on his horizon at the time, but he didn’t like Puget Sound much: Seattle was a depressed city at the time. He said it was exciting to discover, 30 years later, a city and a region that are economically thriving.

Gregg got into banking somewhat by necessity. “The last thing I wanted to do is be a banker,” he said. He had worked summers during college for his father’s small bank in the Midwest. After graduating with a history major and going through a two-year Army stint, “the only valuable skills I had was calculating loans and counting money,” he said. After a decision to move with his wife to Santa Fe, New Mexico, he got a full-time job at a bank — and his career took a turn. He went back to school on the GI Bill to get an MBA, and has since worked in various capacities in the industry, from being the COO of a savings and loan institution to a state regulator.

The stages of his career included working for a savings & loan during a time when S&Ls faced a crisis, growing a bank in the “go-go market of California,” and, right before coming to Kitsap, working to successfully turn around a failed institution. He said the part he’s enjoyed the most was the ability to combine his liberal arts education with his knowledge of the financial sector. His career, for him, has been the perfect path for a person who likes to understand people as much as he likes to understand numbers.

“I enjoy the sheer stimulation of it,” he said. “I continue, almost every day, to draw on the stuff I learned from a liberal arts education — understanding people and what moves employees and customers.”