Deborah Bowie has come home.

Not to Miami, Florida, where she was born and grew up. The new executive director and CEO of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute has come home to Birmingham, the place where she spent 17 years of her formative professional life.

“I started really thinking about a year ago, if I had to make a move the next time for me, where do I think I can do the most good?”

For the past 14 years, Bowie’s travels have centered on going where she could get services for her son, who was born with health challenges.

“But I have an opportunity now to think about how can I best apply my experience and where can that be?” she asked. “When I saw the opportunity in Birmingham, it seems like a no-brainer and I applied.”

Bowie said BCRI, a centerpiece of the Birmingham Civil Rights District, is a community organization that is built on “sacred ground.” It must reflect the community’s priorities when it was constructed, she said.

“I don’t think that fundamentally has changed,” she said. “I think the world has changed. I think our society has changed. We’re now living in an age 33 years later (and) I don’t think anyone could have imagined that enshrining and protecting and sharing history would be under attack. But that’s where we are.

“I definitely feel like the calling in this space, not just for the institute, but for any organization that is seeking to preserve history in this country, is probably more critical today than it ever has been,” Bowie continued. “I don’t think if you told anyone in 1992 that we would be living in a time where people wanted to literally rewrite the history or to omit it from history books — which is what they’re doing in Florida in public education — I think we would all say, ‘No way that would happen.’ But that’s where we are right now.”

A Long Road ‘Home’

Bowie, then Deborah Vance, initially moved to Birmingham to cover Birmingham City Hall for the Birmingham Post-Herald, then the city’s morning newspaper. She then moved on from print journalism to become a reporter, producer and account executive at WBRC 6, ABC 33/40, and WIAT, as well as at an ABC affiliate in Chicago, Illinois.

The career journalist went on to work as senior public information officer for the Birmingham City Council from 2001 to 2003. She left that post to become vice president of community development for the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce. In October 2007, she accepted Mayor Larry Langford’s invitation to serve as his chief of staff for administration making her the youngest and the city’s first African American to serve in that capacity.

The following year, Bowie gave birth to spontaneous triplets — two girls and a boy. Her daughters came home but her son didn’t, spending months in Children’s Hospital.

“He had a condition called necrotizing enterocolitis,” Bowie said. “It’s when your intestines are dying. For babies, typically premature boys, it could be very little damage to the most severe cases where all of the baby’s intestinal tract is dead at birth. My son wasn’t severe, but he had several places in his intestinal tract that were dying, so he had a few surgeries. He had some of that diseased colon removed.”

The mother of four realized when her son was about 18 months that he wasn’t developing at the same pace as his sisters. That yielded a diagnosis of autism.

“I had to make the tough decision to relocate to get my son services because there were no options in Alabama,” Bowie said. “My daughter ended up moving on campus at ASFA (Alabama School of Fine Arts) to finish her senior year, and I’ve been moving ever since. We get this question in our career: Where do you see yourself in five years? Well, when you have a child with a severe disability, you don’t know five years. You don’t know three years. I only knew one year.”

She spent two years in Georgia and several in Florida, where she found it easier to get services for her son, and worked for nonprofits including United Way and served a stint as interim city manager for the city of Gainesville. With her son now living with his father in south Alabama, Bowie afforded herself the chance to go where she felt she could do the most good.

“I thought the timing was right,” Bowie said. “I certainly felt like my experience in the space in nonprofit leadership and my background in government and my knowledge of the community … It just seemed like it was aligned.”

Funding, Infrastructure, Action Plan Are Challenges

As she takes the reins of BCRI, Bowie said the organization is historically overly reliant on public funding.

“That’s not a criticism; it’s an observation,” she said. “I do think the institute will need to significantly diversify its funding stream. I think we’ve all learned, especially now, that your over-reliance on public funding can be a dangerous thing. It is an odd relationship having a publicly funded facility that is also a self-governing nonprofit.”

Bowie said it would be smart for the Institute to seek a model where it begins to build on private investment and build on its “philosophical chops” so that it’s not so heavily reliant on the city.

“Obviously, there are lots of conversations that need to take place about the building we’re in,” she said. “The building is more than 30 years old. Think about what that means to have a public building with end-of-life infrastructure. That’s been a big challenge for the institute. When cities build buildings, whatever the building is, then you have to have a pretty robust maintenance schedule. A lot of politicians love to build beautiful buildings, and they don’t think about how we’re going to take care of them.

“We’re at a critical place where a lot of the infrastructure at the institute needs to be replaced,” Bowie said. “These are conversations that we’re having because, obviously, while we’re out trying to raise money, thinking more strategically about our programming, we also understand that we’re in an aging building that we don’t own. The city owns it. There are a lot of conversations that need to happen in that space.”

The CEO/executive director said she’s heard city and county leaders say that the institute and Civil Rights District are important to the community.

“I do think it’s fair to say that we have to get beyond just ‘saying’ that,” she said. “We need to start seeing that. I don’t mean that as a criticism to the city, but I will tell you (that) 14 years ago, when I was in Birmingham, and then I come back, not a lot looks very different.

“I feel like the district needs a lot more than what people are just saying,” Bowie continued. “Saying isn’t going to lead to action. A comprehensive plan that focuses on the district (is needed). A lot of people will say the institute is an anchor in the district. And of course, it is. But there are other partners in the district too that are also important. I think there needs to be better partnership between these organizations. That’s one of my personal goals, to make sure that we’re not in competition with each other. We’re all there to hold up the same ecosystem.

“The district doesn’t look very different to me than it did 14 years ago,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s just a result of a lack of leadership, but it’s noticeable. I will tell you that it’s noticeable.”

Bowie said she is not afraid of change or challenge.

“If I’m committed to something, I’m going to stay in it until it gets done or I figure out how to resolve the issues,” she said. “I know that this will be a challenging engagement. My eyes are wide open about a lot of the issues in Birmingham that are systemic. The Institute did not get to where it is overnight. They’re there. There are a lot of challenges with the Institute, some of it (because of) leadership over the years. Some of it just relationship, or lack of investment. Check all those boxes.

“But I’m still a believer that with the right leadership, the right momentum and a commitment to mission, particularly now, that place can realize the potential that it set out to when they opened their doors.”

Odessa Woolfolk was a driving force behind the creation of the Institute and served as the founding board chair and president. She’s also been a mentor of the new CEO/executive director for a long time.

“I admire her tremendously,” Bowie said. “I want to be able to say, ‘Odessa, look at what this Institute has become.’ We’ll get there. I believe that.”