Profiles in Business

He’s Found the Right Ingredients for Career Success

Doug Bowen says cooking is a big part of who he is — in more ways than one.
He and his wife, Anna, have traveled to Europe a few times for culinary tours, or extensive learning experiences (more on those later), and he really enjoys bringing new recipes off the page of a book and onto a plate — although he admits that Anna does most of the cooking at home.
Meanwhile, he jokes that it was someone else’s cooking that just might have enabled him to launch what has become a 35-year career in banking, all with the same institution: PeoplesBank.
“My wife’s mom was a short-order cook at one of the luncheonettes in Holyoke,” he said while explaining how he eventually landed work after a lengthy search in the midst of the recession of the mid-’70s. “It just happened to be where Warren Rhodes, the president of the bank, went for lunch every single day; she just kept plugging me to Warren.”
Whether it was his future mother-in-law’s persistent selling or Bowen’s résumé that landed him in PeoplesBank’s leadership-development program is a matter of speculation. What is known is that Bowen made it all the way from the teller’s window (that’s where all those in the program began, and still start today) to the president’s office, and in so doing, he provided a dramatic illustration of one of the bank’s commonly used tag lines: ‘a passion for what is possible.’
“We make it happen every day for employees and customers,” said Bowen. “When you start as a teller and end up in the corner office, that just shows that anything’s possible.”
These days, Bowen and the extended team are making PeoplesBank known for much more than a catchy marketing slogan. Indeed, it is taking the lead in everything from ecologically minded programs and ‘green lending’ to corporate philanthropy.
Indeed, toward the end of the interview in Bowen’s office at the PeoplesBank Executive Office Park in Holyoke, the bucket of a boom truck suddenly appeared in one of the windows, lifting a worker toward the top of one of the light poles in the parking lot outside the complex.
“We’re replacing the bulbs with more energy-efficient products,” he explained, adding that this exercise is one of many at the bank, which acquired the office tower a decade ago, that fall into the broad category of green initiatives. Others include everything from a LEED-certified branch in Springfield, opened earlier this year, to LED lights on holiday displays, which those in the boom truck were also putting up.
The environmentally friendly steps are like PeoplesBank’s now-regular standing near the top of the Boston Business Journal’s annual list of top corporate givers in the Commonwealth, and its recent listing among “America’s Best Banks to Work For” — just some of the ways the institution reflects the character of its president and CEO, who is quite involved in the community.
But Bowen, whose leadership efforts in all of these areas, as well as his extensive work in the community — he currently sits on six boards — helped make him one of BusinessWest’s first Difference Makers in 2009, is prolific in his use of the words ‘team’ and ‘we.’ And he states repeatedly that leadership in such things as corporate giving and going green reflect the mood and direction of an institution, not one person.
Consider this remark when he was asked about his management style and strategy. “I’m a big fan of ‘good to great,’ and I think it all starts with people, getting the right people on the bus, as they say metaphorically, getting them in the right seats, and then providing the driving and direction for the bus. My philosophy is simple: you get good people, give them some direction, and then get out of the room; they do all the heavy lifting.”
For this, the latest installment of its Profiles in Business series, BusinessWest talks with Bowen about everything from his take on the local banking scene to his fascination with wine and wine-making, to what he called a “holistic approach” to both work and life.

Shedding Some Light
Bowen said the economic conditions that prevailed when he graduated from Salem State College in the spring of 1975 were quite similar to what exists today.
“The unemployment rate was around 9%, about what it is now,” he explained. “I was looking for work — GE was right there in Lynn, and Polaroid was close by as well — but no one was hiring.”
Engaged to be married to Anna, his high-school sweetheart, at that time, Bowen started focusing his employment search in Western Mass., and eventually applied to jobs at PeoplesBank, MassMutual, and the former Third National Bank. With that assist, whatever it was worth, from his future mother-in-law, he landed in downtown Holyoke — and has never left.
He credited the leadership-development program with putting him on the proper path and honing the skills he would need to stay on it. And he now considers such talent development some of the most important and intriguing work he does.
“Our program is a little more accelerated now — we put people through it in about six to 12 months as opposed to two years when I did it,” he said. “And we still start people off as tellers, because that’s great experience. Most banks don’t have programs like this anymore, but we’re at a size where we need to have a constant influx of these management-development candidates, so we hire two to three a year, sometimes out of the Isenberg School of Management at UMass, and sometimes out of other schools in New England.
“Leadership development is probably the most fun part of my job; it’s rewarding to see these young people come on and work their way up,” he continued. “I was given the opportunity so many years ago, and it’s great to see these people at the beginning of their careers and know that there’s no limits for them. People can do what I did.”
Indeed, to say that Bowen made the most of his opportunity would be a huge understatement. Before becoming just the 10th president in the history of the 125-year-old bank in 2007, he held just about every title one could have in such an institution.
He acknowledged that most people don’t stay with one bank for 35 years, but quickly added that PeoplesBank is one of a maybe a handful of institutions in this region that someone could work with for that long, given the large number of banks that have disappeared from the landscape or been absorbed by larger banks.
“I was fortunate to work in pretty much all areas of the bank,” he explained. “I started in retail, moved on to operations, and actually trained to be the new chief financial officer, but the person who was going to retire didn’t, so I moved on, which was a good thing. I moved on to the lending areas — consumer lending, residential mortgages, and then in the early ’80s, started the commercial-loan department — before eventually becoming executive vice president.”
Today, Bowen is driving the bus at PeoplesBank, in that metaphoric sense. He has steered it toward leadership in not only green initiatives such as paper-use reduction and those LED lights on the Christmas decorations, but also in green lending. The bank has funded a number of clean-energy business initiatives, ranging from wind-power projects to a partnership with the Holyoke Gas & Electric Department to develop and expand hydroelectric facilities.
He’s also taking the bank ever higher on the Boston Business Journal’s list of the most charitable companies doing business in Massachusetts. In the most recent ranking, involving 2009 numbers, the bank was at number 35 with $705,000 in corporate giving, behind only MassMutual on the list of companies based in Western Mass. Two years earlier, it was 52nd, at $412,000.
Bowen said the bank has historically been generous in its corporate giving, but management, and the workforce as a whole, have made this even more of a priority in recent years.
As for the local banking scene, Bowen said it is more competitive than ever, and that individual institutions, like businesses in most all sectors, must work harder, and be more diligent and creative, to record the profits they have enjoyed over the years.
As an example, he cited one of the bank’s recent initiatives, a drive to open new checking accounts that included a $125 incentive, to match the bank’s 125th birthday.
“It was hugely successful; we did better than we anticipated,” he said, adding quickly that banks have to keep such creative ideas coming. “You need more programs like that because people will copy your idea or try something similar; you have to keep developing new concepts for generating business.”

Recipe for Success
Bowen says PeoplesBank got what he calls a “two-fer” when it hired him.
By that, he meant that his wife, Anna, while never actually an employee, has nonetheless been a visible and, in some cases, integral part of some of the things Bowen and the bank have been doing within the community.
“The bank got me, and it got her, too … she’s such a huge part of my life,” he said, adding quickly that the two do almost everything together, be it in Western Mass. or the Hawaiian islands, where they vacation for a few weeks every late winter, around the time the whales are migrating.
“Sometimes, we’ll kayak out to see the whales — there are hundreds of them,” he said, adding that Hawaii is the perfect place to leave the often-frenetic pace, and formal wardrobe, of a bank president far behind. “It’s a great place to relax and unwind; it’s all T-shirts, flip-flops, and shorts.”
Things were a little different when the two traveled to France and later Italy with friends to learn from some of the best chefs in the world.
The first culinary tour, to the Bordeaux region of France, was 10 compelling days spent with Jean-Pierre Moulle, long-time head chef at the renowned Chez Panisse restaurant, and his wife, Denise.
“It was an incredible experience,” Bowen recalled. “We’d go to the market every day and pick out what we wanted, we’d cook for a good part of the day, then go do a little sightseeing in the afternoon — maybe see cheesemakers or see where they made wine barrels — and then come back, finish cooking, and eat what we had prepared; we had a blast.”
The second trip was to Tuscany in Italy, “another 10-day adventure,” Bowen called it, at a facility connected with a restaurant. “Some of the things we cooked were actually served to guests that evening, and I guess we did OK — no complaints,” he said. “It’s a great way to learn about food, and for a long time I’ve been fascinated by food and how to properly prepare it.”
Bowen was quick to say that he had nothing entrepreneurial in mind when it comes to his culinary interests, and dispatched the notion that he might spend retirement running a restaurant somewhere.
“No, this is something I like to do on a very small scale; I’d never want to do this on a large scale for other people,” he explained, adding that he rarely cooks at home. “My wife is a great cook; on most days, my job is to pick out the wine for dinner, which I’m fine with. Maybe down the road I’ll do more cooking.”

The Bottom Line
Bowen says he’s not looking too far down the road at this point. He’s only 57 and not even thinking about retirement, except to the extent that, when it does come, he’ll be able to spend more time, perhaps a month or more, in Hawaii each year.
“I do two weeks now; maybe I can get it to three — I’ll have to check with the board,” he joked.
In the meantime, he’s perfectly content to keep driving the bus for the bank, helping to find new ways to be green, giving back to the community, and, perhaps most importantly, helping people unlock their passion for what’s possible.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]