2024 Hall of Fame Inductees
Greg Pritchett
A Henderson, Kentucky native, Greg Pritchett’s career began as a teenager on the family farm. Farming is a risky business, so navigating weather, markets, hazardous chemicals, equipment, hostile animals, and sometimes hostile farm workers and neighbors became lessons applied to life and career.
Pritchett graduated from the University of Kentucky and became a bank farm manager for banker Ray Preston, a successful chemical distributor, who has the honor of having his name displayed on buildings at Western Kentucky University and Henderson Community College.
Pritchett was promoted to operations manager of Preston’s new export business. He relocated to Corydon, Indiana, where he spent 9 years learning export shipping, financing, manufacturing, food and worker safety, and accounting. Through job assignments, Pritchett traveled from coast to coast in the US as well as to Asia and Europe.
In 2004, Pritchett became Executive Director of the Henderson County Riverport. He courted the port’s customer base, including suppliers of grains, metals, and fertilizer, and facilitated river barge-based machinery heavy lift projects to support new manufacturing plants in Bowling Green, Owensboro, Bardstown, and most recently Henderson’s Pratt Paper plant.
Pritchett worked with Henderson and the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development to recruit new industry partnerships to Henderson, including the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, KBT, the Kentucky Association of Riverports, the Kentucky Water Transportation Advisory Board, inland terminals, and ports. He also served on the Transportation Research Board’s Inland Waterways Committee. He has been invited to speak at numerous regional, state, and national meetings. He co-authored a research paper with Elizabeth Collins, President of Collins Engineers, which they presented at the International Based Smart Rivers Conference Pittsburgh meeting in 2017.
Pritchett is beginning his 35th year of marriage to the love of his life Melissa, along with children Anne Nash (husband Ryan) and Seth Pritchett and his soon-to-be wife Chelsey Austin.