Beer Innovators: Meet the People Impacting the Beer World

September 15, 2014 By Staff

Bob Pease

After four years of six-day work weeks as a lodge operations director for a ski resort in Boulder, CO, Bob Pease was looking for a new challenge, so he answered an ad in the Boulder Daily Camera for a customer service manager at what was then The Association of Brewers. He landed the job, started in June 1993 and worked his way up to a promotion as vice president in 1999 and was named chief operating officer of the Brewers Association in 2010. (On Sept. 10, the Brewers Association announced Pease’s promotion to CEO.)

“On the day-to-day basis, I’m the person in charge of making sure that the organization is meeting all of its objectives and goals,” Pease says.

It’s a broad, but hands-on role. He is involved in the hiring of all Brewers Association employees (“Hire the person, not the resume, and don’t be afraid to hire people who are smarter than you,” he says), has led efforts to relocate the BA from its office on Pearl Street in Boulder to a new office nearly double the size, and has overseen the BA’s Export Development Program since it was founded in 2004. He also plays a highly visible leadership role in the BA’s government affairs work, organizing the annual BA Capitol Hill climb and lobbying for small brewers’ interests, like federal excise tax reduction legislation under the Small Brewer Reinvestment and Expanding Workforce Act (Small BREW Act).

Now 20 years later, what started as a job has become a gratifying career, says Pease.

“We feel like we’re making a difference. We realize it’s beer—we’re not curing cancer—but we play a leadership role in an emerging and dynamic community.”

This profile appears in the November 2014 issue of All About Beer Magazine. Click here for a free trial of our next issue.

Go back to the main list of beer innovators.