N.C. treasurer Janet Cowell shares passion for public service with UNC graduate students

Standing in the airport the day after graduation, Janet Cowell was mockingly asked if she was planning on finding herself.

She was about to travel to the eastern part of the world, and it seemed cliche. But her post-college travel fueled her passion for public service.

Cowell is now North Carolina’s first female state treasurer.

Cowell spoke to students and faculty at UNC’s School of Government on Tuesday about her life experiences and how they have prepared her for her position as a public servant.

Most students in the audience were master’s students studying public administration.

“There are times in your life when you have very intense learning experiences and times where you develop a strategic plan that will last you for years — shaping a lifetime of how you view the world,” Cowell said in the lecture.

Cowell, who graduated in 1990 from the University of Pennsylvania, said while many of her classmates got finance jobs in cities in the Northeast, she took her post-graduation plans in a different direction.

“We all get stuck and don’t know what the next move is so we seek things that are 180 degrees opposite of what we’ve already done,” she said.

Her plan was to take a plane to Berlin, go to Moscow to the Trans-Siberian Railroad en route to Beijing, to hopefully get a job in Taiwan.

After years working as a financial analyst in Asia, she moved to North Carolina in 1997. She said she felt drawn to public service.

“I wanted to live in a place where I could participate, have an opinion, vote and be part of building my worldview,” she said.

She emphasized the importance of finding one’s own path and being independent-minded in order to be successful in politics.

“You can pack a lot in, there’s no end to the journey,” she said. “You are daily taking a journey of self-discovery.”

The Carolina Society of Future Leaders sponsored the lecture. Cowell didn’t take a fee for speaking.

The objective of the organization is to bring in public service leaders who can speak on the concept of leadership, club president Jenifer Della Valle said.

An audience member asked Cowell what advice she had for future female trailblazers in public service.

“If you have an idea, get a man to back you on it. Sadly, it’s true, but you need validators as a female,” Cowell said.

Cowell said rather than being simply confident to hold a high-powered position, women have to be confident and likable to climb the corporate ladder.

She said women also typically do not have the breadth and scope of experience that men have, so they are not considered qualified for senior-level positions as often.

“It’s hard to know why that is. Is it that women aren’t raising their hand and getting those opportunities? Women somehow fall behind when it comes to getting to the highest levels of these organizations.”

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