Tom Bowen
Arkansas State University Chancellor Kelly Damphousse announced on March 10, 2021, that Tom Bowen, a 25-year veteran leader in collegiate and professional athletics who owns nearly 15 years of experience as an FBS athletics director, has been named the Red Wolves’ Vice Chancellor for Intercollegiate Athletics.
With his arrival to A-State, Bowen will make his third stop leading an FBS athletics program after previously completing highly successful stints as the director of athletics at Memphis from 2012-19 and San Jose State from the end of 2004 until June of 2012.
Bowen most recently spent the last two years as the president and founder of Bellwether Athletic Leadership Strategies, a national consulting company for Division I, II and III collegiate programs and private educational institutions providing leadership strategies, feasibility studies, strategic plans, fundraising expertise/structures and organizational design and efficiencies.
Along with his strong history of achievements as a collegiate athletics administrator, which also included stops at the University of California, Berkeley and Saint Mary’s College of California, Bowen’s experience working closely with college institutions across the nation at Bellwether and as an executive with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers were part of his path to Arkansas State.
Bowen began his Memphis tenure playing an integral role in the formation of the American Athletic Conference. Memphis became a charter member of the new league on July 1, 2013, and Bowen spent time serving as vice chair of the American Athletic Conference Athletic Directors Council.
Additionally, he served on the Athletic Directors Advisory Board of the BCS in 2013. Bowen was the chair of the American Athletic Conference’s Board of Athletics Directors during his time at Memphis as well. In July 2014, he was voted to represent The American Athletic Conference on the NCAA Division I Leadership Council, an advisory body to the NCAA Division I Board of Directors, by his fellow conference athletics directors.
Bowen served as both an assistant and associate athletics director at Cal from 2000-02 and worked in multiple roles at Saint Mary’s College from 1995-2000, including a four-month stint as interim athletics director. He was also the director of community affairs and executive director of the 49ers Foundation with the San Francisco 49ers from 2002-04.
The 1983 University of Notre Dame graduate majored in theology/sociology and spent time studying for the priesthood with the Holy Cross Fathers. Bowen earned a master’s degree in administration/education from the University of San Francisco in 1990. He and his wife, Mia, are the parents of three children: sons, Andrew and Peter, and daughter, McKenna.
