中文There is a special kind of pressure that comes with inheriting the family business. Not the kind you feel from a boss — the kind you feel from a dad. Columbine Label, a US label manufacturer founded in 1988, just made that transition official, promoting Rachel Jackson to president, effective immediately, in a planned handover designed to pass leadership to the next generation of the Jackson family.
Rachel was previously vice president of operations, and her promotion is the visible tip of a deliberate succession plan. Her father, Greg Jackson, stays on as CEO in a strategic and advisory role, while her brother Ryan serves as vice president of sales and new business development. So this is not a dramatic exit and a stranger at the wheel — it is a family tightening its grip on the future while leaning on decades of shared trust.
Greg’s pride is palpable. “I could not be more proud to have our two children guiding and directing the future growth and direction of Columbine Label,” he said, singling out the leadership Rachel has shown both inside the company and across the industry. In her relatively short tenure she has driven significant process development and refinement that, in his words, will position Columbine as a leading manufacturer well into the future.
Rachel brings more than six years with the company, a background in Construction Science from Kansas State University, and two years in the construction industry before returning to the fold. During her time she has reorganised customer-facing functions like estimating and customer support, refined hiring, and built marketing processes that generate leads. That is the unsexy, high-value work that separates a company that coasts from one that compounds.
Her industry standing is already real: she recently received Labels & Labeling’s Future Leader Award, co-chairs the membership committee for TLMI (the label industry’s trade association), and is active in TLMI’s Label Leaders of Tomorrow program. In an industry that talks constantly about attracting young talent, here is a young leader already doing the work of building the pipeline.
Columbine itself is a solid, values-driven operation. Founded by a husband-and-wife team and bought by the Jackson family in February 1999, it makes product identification labels with a focus on food and beverage. It has won TLMI’s Eugene Singer Award — a benchmarking study for financial excellence — six times. Its reputation rests on customer service, fast turnaround, and treating customers, employees and vendors with the respect it expects for itself.
For any family-owned print or label business, Columbine’s move is a quiet masterclass in succession. Too many good companies die not from bad markets but from botched handovers — a founder who will not let go, or a sudden departure with no plan. Columbine did the opposite: it signalled the transition years ahead, built the next leader’s credibility inside and outside the company, and kept the founder as a safety net rather than a blockade.
The lesson is simple but rare. Plan the handoff like you would plan a major capital purchase — with intent, with time, and with the next generation already in the room. Rachel Jackson’s promotion is not just a feel-good story. It is what business continuity looks like when a family actually means it.
Source: Labels & Labeling
