Meet Jordan Bowman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jordan Bowman.

Hi Jordan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I believe in a world that is rich in connection and compassion. Currently, this looks like helping other humans connect more deeply to themselves, each other, and the Earth. I do this primarily through my role as a group facilitator, guide/mentor/coach, and as a community builder. I have the privilege of leading Journeymen, a non-profit organization based in the Triangle area that mentors and supports 12-17 year-old young men on their Journey to becoming self-aware men of integrity.

When I was 14 years old, I felt lost. I was holding so much pain, anger, and grief and I thought I had to hold it all by myself. Because of Journeymen, I was given the opportunity to consciously step into my journey to manhood. Role models and elders supported and empowered me to become the best version of myself. They gave me tools to understand and harness my emotions, tools to stay accountable and empowered me to be the author of my own story. This community helped save my life. I’m not sure where I would be if it were not for this community of caring men and boys in the Raleigh area. In my Rites of Passage, I learned how to consciously face my pain. Mentors and elders helped me transform that pain into a gift. After receiving this gift, I knew that I had to give this to as many young men as I possibly could.

This passion carried me through 7 years as a young mentor and leader within other boys to men mentoring and rites of passage organizations. I became a co-leader and then full-leader leader of the Rites of Passage adventure weekends and I also joined the board of directions. After a term as board president, I had raised enough money for Journeymen to hire our first paid positions, two half-time contractors, and I came on as the founding executive director alongside our founding program director, Jake Humphrey.

Graduating from NC State in the middle of the pandemic (May 2020) left a unique opening for me. I had a degree in entrepreneurship and nonprofit studies from NC State University & the whole world was turned upside down. I decided to stick with what I knew so well, facilitating group mentoring circles for young men in Journeymen. I decided to go all-in, setting goals to bring my position full-time and to hire others to help support young men on their paths to becoming self-aware, men of integrity.

Since 2019, I have served as the steward of this mentoring community – growing our programs from serving 5-10 young men to providing 1,300 mentoring hours to 35+ young men each year. I have also taken this skillset to serve many different groups. As a freelance group facilitator with jbowman.org, I help corporate teams, social entrepreneurship students, elected government officials, and other community leaders & changemakers relate to themselves in each other in new ways. Facilitating groups on their journey to unlock their collective wisdom is one of my favorite things in the world.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s been a constant struggle. How do we sustain ourselves? As the leader of a start-up non-profit organization, it feels as if we are always on the edge. At any given moment, we may have 3-6 months of funding left and we are constantly searching for ways to iterate and be responsive to the needs of our community while sustaining consistent funding sources. Forming the right partnerships has been a key learning for us – more is not always merrier. We’ve learned how important it is to have a clear alignment of values and building trust before partnering. How do we take care of our people? Addressing burnout has been a key question for us. Since the need of our work is so large and there are not many other organizations providing the depth of care we provide, we are constantly overwhelmed by the need and that sometimes leads our staff (including myself) to not take care of themselves as much as we should. How can we scale while maintaining our soul? Growing and scaling our programs has not been hard, what’s been difficult is growing them without watering them down. The question at the center of most of my conversations recently have been: “how do we scale and grow to meet the need without losing our soul, or what makes our program special?” This is an active question for me and I believe it to be the most important struggle connected to the future of our organization.

My superpower is connecting individuals and groups. I have built and sustained the Journeymen community from its infancy into its young adulthood and I plan to lead and mentor this community until it has fully matured. The size of our program has quadrupled since I have been leading it and it has grown much deeper. However, we can not do this alone. I certainly haven’t done this alone and in order to address the emerging challenges in our world, we will need to work together. I hold this a central to my leadership style – so please reach out to me to see how I can support you and your work and vice versa.

Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?

Action precedes clarity:

During the pandemic, I started a virtual men’s circle for guys who were struggling from the isolation caused by the pandemic. Five of us got together and we started with a question, “how might we support people dealing with isolation and loneliness in this time?” What started with 5 turned into 20 men meeting monthly and then 30, 40, 50, and near the end of the project we had over 300 men on our email list. I sustained this international community for over a year before we decided to localize and return to in-person meetings where we could and to continue virtually once a month. The important part was not getting it all right before we launched. It was launching and testing our assumptions and continuing to iterate based on the feedback we were getting.

Fail fast & fail forward:
In 2020, I also was a part of a project called pledge my check. For those who were getting stimulus checks who didn’t really need them, we encouraged them to pledge their checks to those who needed the help most. We eventually convinced 474 people from 42 states to pledge over $300,000 to local charities and individuals in their lives who truly needed the support. Getting to this level required us to fail fast and fail forward. We made hypothesis and we tested them. We tried new ideas and left behind what failed and doubled down on what worked. We learned a lot about the cable news cycle but ultimately we pushed through enough failures that we found a message that struck a cord and people started to pay attention and this allowed our message to help citizens shift their focus from themselves to their neighbors.

Follow your curiosity (and not necessarily your “passion”):
In 2023, I decided to fully lean into my role and identity as a facilitator and launched jbowman.org to offer my group facilitation services to other groups. I didn’t wake up one day and realize that my passion was facilitating groups. I had years and years of experience with many different jobs & organizations where I played this role. I realized that this was the place where I felt both comfortable and grounded but also excited and alive by the uncertainty of it. It was the through-line in so many of my experiences, I allowed myself to get curious, “what if I spent more time doing this professionally? Now, as a facilitator, my style is to engage the group in unlocking their collective wisdom together. I guide more than I teach. I introduce new processes that change how people interact. I use experiential and participatory techniques to do this. This unique style of mine came from getting curious about ways of being, watching and admiring techniques in others.

Everything good begins with hope
American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil rights leader, Howard Thurman said, “Do not ask yoursef what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.” I invite all of you to heed to wisdom of  Thurman in pursuit of your personal calling. I would  add that everything good begins with hope. Pursue the hope you have for this world, hold it, dance with it, and begin to weave it into your life as you would an old friend coming back home afer years away. This is not a fools errand, this is the responsibility of being alive.

Pricing:

• Our Journeymen programs are offered to the community free of charge. Individual and corporate donors help to offset the $100/month cost per boy.
• Pricing for facilitation varies on the group & need, visit my website to set up a free 30-minute discovery call with me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jbowman.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordan7bowman/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordan7bowman
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan7bowman/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan7Bowman

Image Credits
All images are owned by myself or Journeymen Triangle.