Steve Bowen

About

Stephen Bowen currently serves as the executive director of the Hoover Education Success Initiative. In this role, he works to ensure that Hoover’s education research is informed by and responsive to the needs of practitioners, state policy leaders and education reform advocates.

Before joining Hoover, Bowen served as the deputy executive director for state leadership at the Council of Chief State School Officers, where he oversaw programs and services to support the council’s members, the state education chiefs, and other state education agency leaders. He joined the council in 2013.

From 2011 to 2013, he served as the commissioner of education. In this role, he led the department to better target its supports to schools and school districts; enacted and implemented public charter school legislation and expanded other school choice options; enacted innovative schools legislation; and worked to improve transparency in reporting of student outcomes.

He previously served briefly as a senior policy adviser for Governor Paul LePage, joining the administration from the Maine Heritage Policy Center (now the Maine Policy Institute), a state-based public policy think tank where he served as education policy director. He joined the center in 2007, after serving two terms in the Maine House of Representatives.

Bowen began his teaching career in Fairfax County, Virginia, and went on to teach middle and high school social studies in both Virginia and his native Maine for ten years.

Bowen holds a BA in political science from Drew University and a master of education, with a specialization in secondary education, from George Mason University.