Family Rooted in GSU Sacrifice

In 2023, Bowen began serving on the GSU Foundation Board of Trustees, which provides leadership and strategic direction for the university, guiding its overall mission relative to philanthropy, institutional advancement and giving. On the board, her responsibilities include making decisions on major initiatives, approving budgets and ensuring the university’s long-term success and fundraising goals are achieved.

Trustee is one of many GSU connections in her family, which includes sister Jacquelyn Anthony Bryant (M.P.A. ’88, Ph.D. ’94) and mother Jacquelwyn Willis Anthony. The question is never if the next child is going to college, it’s when do classes start?

In this family, big leaps begin with education.

Bowen’s maternal grandfather, Paul Sylvester Willis, was an Alabama farmer, coal miner and father of nine “who wanted to be a tooth doctor. He didn’t say dentist,” Anthony recalls. “He didn’t get a high school education, because he only went to school two or three months a year between the planting and the harvesting. But he was a very intelligent man.”

Willis and wife Wilter Lee Jackson Willis “sent all of us to school,” she adds. “He said, ‘Children, you have to get your education … Make sure you go where you want to go and do what you want to do.’”

Anthony attended Georgia State from 1993 to 1995 “because it was good schooling right in the city.” She worked as a schoolteacher and administrator.

As a single mom, she raised Jacquelyn and Janine in south DeKalb County with simple values: God first, family second, career third. Down time was scarce. “Always have something in mind to do to help somebody else,” she told her daughters, who volunteered with her sorority, church, and for voter education efforts and more.

Bowen never ran out of energy to keep pushing herself.

“On many a night, both of us would lay down our heads and go to sleep, at least I would,” Bryant says. “But Jan, she would be in her room underneath the covers with a flashlight on reading a book. Mom would say, ‘Jan, I told you, you got to go to bed. You got to go to sleep. Stop reading.’”

The girls went to Gordon (now McNair) High School. The family attended Greater Travelers Rest Baptist Church, now House of Hope. Bowen kept the flashlight on, excelling in academics and in track and field.

“My No. 1 role model is my mom, who did a lot of amazing things to get her two daughters to a place of excellence, and she made a lot of sacrifices,” Bowen says. “When I think about persevering, she is the person I look to, and I don’t think that’ll ever change. She is always that person if I want to know how to navigate complexities, make hard decisions and live with my choices.”

As Diplomas Pile Up, a Mindset Strengthens  

Bowen “got three degrees and I’ve got three,” says Bryant, the director of learning and development for Morehouse College. “And that was all because the expectation was high.”

Bryant attended GSU for her master’s degree in public administration and Ph.D. in Political Science. She also worked full time and graduated debt free.

“GSU accommodated my life and my schedule, and I needed programs that would accommodate my graduation time frame and provide a world-class education,” she says.

“GSU met all those criteria.”

Higher education brought a family expectation of school loyalty and giving back. This is why Bowen pours into others today, and is proud that her nephew Joshua, a sports journalism major at Morehouse, took summer classes at GSU.

Major achievements demand sacrifices, which Bowen prefers to think of as calculated tradeoffs. She learned this vividly as a child studying her mother’s ledger of monthly income, bills and spending. “I would see what was left, the discretionary income,” Bowen says. “We would talk about how we were going to spend that little bit of money and make decisions based on what we could actually afford.”

It was Anthony’s belief that she owed her daughters a college education at her expense. She would say, “‘I can pay tuition, or we can have air conditioning.’  So, in the summer, we’d be hot.”

Filling Lanes of Support for a Big Goal

Bowen envisioned herself as an engineer, inspired by a cousin, Clarence Mitchell Jr., a nuclear engineer who worked on the space shuttle and International Space Station. He and other relatives had gone to Tuskegee University, and Bowen’s mother wanted her to follow. Bowen also considered a track scholarship from Tennessee State.

During law school, Bowen worked during the day as an engineer.

Ultimately Bowen picked Clemson and did not look back, despite her mother’s tears. “I was gonna make a way and I did that,” her mother says of the out-of-state cost. “I wore so many raggedy stockings. I wore the lining out of my favorite skirt.”

At Clemson, Bowen earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering, loving the excitement of Division I football and becoming homecoming queen. Her son Jackson now studies computer science there.

Whenever a member of this family chases a big goal, the others understand the assignment, and each takes a lane of support. When Bowen took the LSAT at the University of Georgia in Athens, her mother drove her, napped in the car during the long test, then drove her home.

When Bowen was unsure about going to GSU at night, her mother paid for the first semester. When she needed protected study time for the bar exam, she moved in with her mom and covered walls with sticky notes. Her natural competitiveness drove her as well.

“She took the bait,” Anthony recalls. “It wasn’t easy, but she loved it.”

Attending the GSU College of Law after working all day as an engineer increased Bowen’s capacity to make tradeoffs. She was in her late 20s, and had to find balance. “I made conscious decisions about when to be a student and when to be a person,” she says. “There were some grades that didn't get made but it was a deliberate approach. At that time, my approach wasn’t that I was putting my life on hold, but it simply was my life, and everything that I want to do has to fit in at some point, in some way.”

Doing It Because It’s Hard

Bowen married and in 2003 had her son. Motherhood was a new mountain for someone who’d always been physically fit. Later, in 2007, she began working with personal trainer Sule Welch (M.S. ’02), who had just earned his Master of Science in Marketing at GSU.

“She was very driven about her job, aspiring to be a partner at this law firm, and she’s a relatively new mom trying to get back in a rhythm,” Welch recalls. He observed in her a growth mindset: “She's open to all things, and not limited by any one thing.”

As age 50 approached, the divorced Bowen considered herself at halftime, eyeing bold new routes like a savvy offensive coordinator.

“I look at life as a 100-year journey, so there’s a lot of game left to be played,” she says. “But I’ve spent my whole life playing this one game. Is the path I have taken the only path that is part of my purpose? Or are there other paths, something else that I should be doing to maximize all the gifts and talents that God has given me? With all these skills, all these relationships, what do you do to be an even more effective contributor to the world?”

Just as a team with an explosive offense relies on a good defense, Bowen also asked herself, “Have I gotten comfortable where I am? Have I lost my ability to achieve hard things? Am I willing to do hard things? Engage in the discipline required by something that I do not know how to do, or whose outcome is unclear?”

Her internal conversation inspired her, as did a 1962 John F. Kennedy quote: “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

In pursuit of her next big challenge, Bowen “received a clear message in my spirit to 'go hike Kilimanjaro'” in 2019.

Summiting the ‘Roof of Africa’

At 19,341 feet, Mount Kilimanjaro is sometimes called “the Roof of Africa.” It is the tallest mountain on that continent and the world’s highest free-standing mountain above sea level. It’s also a dormant volcano that challenges climbers with its high altitude, cold temperatures and occasional strong winds.

Bowen’s initial plan to climb “Kili” in mid-2020 fizzled because of the pandemic, but she notched other milestones. She married Darwin G. Rencher, a Clemson grad and former student athlete and entrepreneur, in 2022. Their blended family includes three young-adult sons. The couple known as “JanDar” enjoy fitness, traveling and matching outfits, and tag their social posts #theadventuresofjandar. They are principals of JanDar Productions LLC, their sports advisory and entertainment promotions company.

In private practice, Bowen occupies a pinnacle as a “pragmatic and seasoned technology attorney, strategist and entrepreneur,” her LinkedIn profile says. At BakerHostetler, where more than 1,000 attorneys across the U.S. help clients with business and regulatory issues, Bowen is formerly the national co-leader of the Privacy Governance and Technology Transactions practice. She counsels clients in and negotiates enterprise-changing commercial deals for the acquisition, licensing and commercialization of technology, intellectual property and artificial intelligence. She has considerable experience in digital transformation, privacy and cybersecurity, and has negotiated deals worth billions of dollars.

Bowen is also an expert in board governance, having served on 13 nonprofit and social enterprise boards in 20 years of commitment to the community. Her LinkedIn profile details highlights: She has led a social enterprise safely through the COVID-19 shutdown and re-opening; successfully led six CEO transitions, both planned and unexpected; improved board quality and performance through restructured nominations and governance processes for multiple boards; served as board chair on two boards and governance chair on four boards; led a nonprofit merger; and played a key role in the restructuring of a philanthropy-focused board of directors to support next-level strategic growth in giving and growing the endowment.

Going Over the Wall

As she forged her paths in law and entrepreneurship, Bowen never stopped training with Welch, who fused martial arts and traditional conditioning to build her endurance, leg power, core stability, climbing stamina and the mental toughness to endure the final summit of Kili. When Bowen traveled for work, Welch adapted her training to fitness equipment available at the hotel.

“I trained in oxygen deprivation situations to be better equipped to deal with the altitude,” she recalls. “I hiked long hours with a backpack twice as heavy as I planned to carry on the trek. The most challenging aspect: Every time he (Welch) saw me break through a training barrier, he raised the bar, increased the challenge and forced me to decide that I was not going to concede or tap out.”

Bowen challenged herself, Welch says. “One of her things became, ‘I actually want to see how much I can take mentally and physically.’ Whenever she hit the wall, she decided, ‘I’m gonna go over the wall. I’m gonna go through and I’m not gonna back down this time. She just blasted it. She hit the wall, but at no point was she broken.”

As she trained, family members took their lanes. Her mother researched the terrain, weather, clothing, shoes, toe socks, windproof sunglasses — and all of it had to meet the weight limit.

“The itinerary tells you what you’re doing, but it doesn’t tell you how to do it successfully,” her mother says. “You’re going up the mountain for four or five days, and you’re coming down in 12 hours.”

“I hiked with her six miles one day through the woods of Stone Mountain and did my best not to slow her down,” her sister says. “She was very, very focused. The closer she got to the climb, I sent her text messages that said, ‘You got this. And my hope is that as you climb this mountain, you commune with God and what his creation is about.’ I think as Jan put God first, that shows up a lot in her climb, because she could not have done it without being guided by a higher power.”

The final ascent began July 19, the trek’s seventh day, at 11 p.m. in pitch dark. The group of 10 would hike roughly 4 miles up to the summit at Uhuru Peak (19,341 feet of altitude), then 4 miles back, take a short break, then 5.6 miles to lower-elevation huts.

“I'm doing it because it is hard,” Bowen says she reminded herself. “I will be a better person for having done it.”

Later, she wrote to her coworkers, “THIS WAS THE HARDEST THING I HAVE EVER DONE IN MY LIFE.”

At the summit, “my first emotion was sheer relief!” she says. “Then the tears came, then the acknowledgement of self and having done something so amazing. Having endured hard training, which paid off and showed up several times during the seven days, to prepare myself to do something harder and achieving the goal was so personally gratifying. This was a spiritual quest and along the way and at the top, I got some answers.”

Her first night after returning from Tanzania, her family welcomed her with a pizza party. She shared gifts, pictures and stories. For days, her lower body ached, “and I spent a lot of time with my legs up the wall from yoga,” she says. The first month back, Bowen dreamed of Kilimanjaro constantly, feeling she still had climbing ahead of her.

Doing Big Things

The trek lives on through motivational messages on her LinkedIn feed. It proved she could take on a big goal and meet the sacrifices necessary. Such an epic achievement boosted her credibility with prospective professional athletes, giving her more confidence to tell them, “Get prepared. Know the details that can make or break your quest. Get the right people around you, too.”

When asked for advice to current GSU students, she replies:

“You have to pay the price to do hard things. We often want to do big things, but we don’t often want to pay the price that’s required. Once you set a big goal, part of your planning process has to be determining who is going to do what sort of enablement you need to achieve the goal. For Kilimanjaro, I had to do all the work with people around me that helped me do it. It wasn’t a solo effort, and that’s what you should figure out. Who do you need around you? What kind of talents do you need around you to help you be successful?”

Deliberation and intentionality leave little room for luck. Merit, skill, talent and contribution are everything. Lean into your gifts, pour into others and let them pour into you. When you think you’ll break, break through instead. You belong in the room with highly talented people who are lucky you are there. With the Janine Anthony Bowen mindset, any mountain can be climbed.

Photos courtesy of Janine Anthony Bowen