Pierce, Gretchen Hult
From Lane Co Oregon
Gretchen Pierce, one of Oregon's most prominent community and business leaders, led the University of Oregon Foundation Board of Trustees as president in 1997to 1998.
Pierce, 52 in 1997, was president and general manager of the Eugene real estate development firm Hult & Associates. She replaced John Herman, UO Class of `60, as board president. Herman, president of Duffel Sportswear in Portland, served as board chairman for the year.
A 1966 marketing graduate of the UO, Pierce was an active business and community leader in Oregon for more than 10 years. She became a member of the UO Foundation board in 1986 and also served on the UO College of Arts and Sciences Advisory Council.
Pierce was a former president of the Eugene Chamber of Commerce and a former chair of Eugene's annual Women on the Move conference. She was a board member of Siuslaw Valley Banks and also served on the boards of the City Club of Eugene, Sacred Heart Hospital Foundation, Eugene-Springfield Metropolitan Partnership and Southtown Rotary Club.
At the state level, Pierce served on the Oregon Economic Development Commission and the Governor's Task Force on Education and the Economy. A frequent advocate for higher education in the state, she was a member of UO Alumni Advocates and last year founded a new UO Foundation trustee committee on legislative relations. In 1990, she received a March of Dimes White Rose Award given to women of achievement in Oregon.
Pierce worked for Boise Cascade Corp. in Portland and Boise, Idaho, for 20 years before taking over management of her family's business after the death of her father, Nils Hult, in 1985. Nils Hult served on the UO Foundation board from 1978-84.
The Hult family operated lumber mills in Lane County for many years, but sold the mills in the 1960s and went into property development. The family contributed $3 million toward construction of Eugene's Hult Center for the Performing Arts in 1982.
Pierce and her husband, Howard, have two children and live in Eugene.
