Poole Pack Profile: Meet Doug Rowe
The college's human resources consultant strives to meet employees where they want to be met.
To call Doug Rowe a people person is a big understatement. In his case, the people include about 575 Poole College employees.
As the human resources consultant in Poole’s Office of Business Services, Rowe is the one-stop-shopping destination for faculty, staff and student workers on issues related to joining or leaving Poole — and everything between those points.
He calls his duties managing the employee lifecycle: posting jobs, recruiting, onboarding, benefits, informing employees about campus openings, offboarding.
“I meet everyone where they want to be met. I’m always trying to think of ways to make employees’ work lives easier and better.”
“I have an open-door policy, and everyone knows that,” he says. “I meet everyone where they want to be met. I’m always trying to think of ways to make employees’ work lives easier and better….so people can reach the greatest versions of themselves.”
The best part of his job? “I love the people here. They’re great people, and no day is ever the same,” Rowe says.
People at Poole love him back.
Rowe is the 2025 recipient of Poole’s Award for Excellence. That was followed by his selection for an NC State university-wide Award for Excellence, as one of 12 recipients across campus recognized last June. The university award is the highest honor granted to non-faculty employees.
The former colleague who nominated Rowe for the university award noted that he started his position when many Poole employees considered the college’s human resources office to be, as she put it, a “black hole,” generally unresponsive and unreliable.
Not now.
In Rowe’s four years at Poole, he has filled the hole with the light of transparency, communication and caring.
“I think that’s where we’ve flipped it, getting people acclimated slowly to a different level of HR. I think we’re trending in the right direction now,” Rowe says, “and meeting the needs of the college.”
His Poole position also meets his own needs — especially more time for his personal life.
Rowe’s previous managerial jobs in retail and the food industry didn’t give him that option. Not when he worked weekends and holidays and, in one position, frequently toiled until late at night and then returned at 3:30 a.m. to unload delivery trucks.
In 2019, he and his wife, Heidi, moved to North Carolina from Florida, where he grew up, for her new job at Duke University Hospital.
That led the former high school football player — who initially considered working as a scout or administrator for a football organization — to examine his own career and pursue a more HR-focused track.
He started in Poole’s HR office as a temp worker in 2021 before he was hired full time and later promoted to his current position. At first, he was Poole’s only HR professional. Now he works with an assistant director of employee development and success.
Rowe compares a university campus to a city. “It’s moving and alive and changing. It’s never dull. It gives you a lot of fortitude to learn and grow,” he says. “That’s probably the best you can hope for in a job, and not everyone gets that. It’s exciting to have that opportunity and make the most of it.”
He has used that opportunity to build strong connections with his colleagues, who share the goal of helping students succeed at Poole and beyond.
I’ve met a lot of really cool and interesting people. I’ve formed relationships with them, and I really like that,” he says. “They’re so dang nice and different from each other. It’s never the same conversation…They’re all hard workers, and it’s very inspiring to see we all believe in the same mission.”
“They’re all hard workers, and it’s very inspiring to see we all believe in the same mission.”
Rowe and his wife shared the same mission of meeting a future partner when they met on the dating app Match about 10 years ago. “We were a 100% perfect match. We married within a year, and there was no looking back,” he says.
At home, he and his wife are greatly outnumbered by their pets — three dogs and four cats. “When I go home, I’m a quiet man who reads books (science fiction and horror) and spends family time with my loving wife,” Rowe says.
The couple has traveled widely, including to Portugal, Spain and a three-week vacation last summer in Japan. This year? Ireland and Scotland.
With a heavily inked left arm, Rowe has a tradition of getting a tattoo wherever he travels.
As with his Poole job, some of his tattoos bring out the people person in him. In honor of his wife, whom he nicknamed Bear, he has a bruin tattoo. The animal’s eyes are hearts.
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