JOHN STOWMAN was born in Fairbanks, grew up here, made time to travel for a bit before returning to complete his degree in business at UAF (’85), and raised his children here. This community has shaped John into a pragmatic dreamer, a cycling evangelist, and an idea junkie.
John grew up with a Fairbanksian’s appreciation of “repurposed materials”—as only Alaskans really can. He loves anything with wheels (see FAIRBIKES) and his outlook on life has been defined by his relationship to some very special old trucks and a 1982 Sekai twelve speed.
John is unapologetically lazy, and it is one of his biggest assets. For some, being harried and overworked is a status symbol. Not John. He likes consolidated movement and he loves the elegant solution. Throughout John’s career, he has often been asked to work wonders, build bridges, and move mountains; that is what John does.
John overhauled snow removal techniques for a project on the slope that allowed one man to move a “mountain of snow” faster than a crew of 4 men working on the same project, reducing the labor costs by 75% and equipment costs by 80%.
He partnered with another accountant to bridge the complicated legal and tax codes of a closely held business going through liquidation to the satisfaction of their clients.
And on more than one occasion, John has leveraged his knowledge of everything from banking procedures to physics in order to ensure that grant proposals, wire transfers, timber, and associates arrive safely and on time (if not a moment sooner) to their appropriate destinations.
If pointed at “pain-in-the-back” work that is guaranteed to take more time or aspirin than you could spare, John sees it as a personal challenge to find the most effective, fastest way to complete that task. Moreso, he is always willing to share how he identified the right tools or skills needed to recreate his latest feat so that you might do so too. No matter where he worked, John discovered his favorite part of any job was finding innovative and (whenever possible) elegant solutions to the varied challenges of doing business.
Today, John coaches clients to develop strategies to deal with competing priorities, empowers people to build better experiences, and engages them in discovering how to move the mountains in their own path. His hobbies include metalsmithing, motorcycles, and the on-going expansion of our local bikeshare: FAIRBIKES.