Mike Owens

Keeping something in the pipeline

Consider the paradoxes of Mike Owens’ life: he received his bachelor’s degree in education from Arizona State University in 1975, yet he’s never taught more than two consecutive years at a stretch in a conventional public school setting. He’s a Carter-era “West Winger” who helped create the U.S. Department of Education and is equally at home discussing construction permits with oil barons in west Texas. And he’s used his "deskside manner,” those counseling qualities every good teacher hones, more often on adult employees than students.

Yet to Owens, who has been at various points in his career a teacher, a political consultant and a businessman, it’s all of one piece. Becoming involved with educational funding issues soon after he graduated, Owens had a chance to work on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign in 1976 and followed the peanut farmer to the White House as a special assistant who worked with Robert Strauss in setting up the education department. He said he figured having the political savvy would make him a better teacher, since his knowledge of the “system” would allow him to advocate for public schools — something he still supports strongly.

"Politics made me even more passionate about education,” he said.

After the Reagan revolution in 1980, Owens took his talents elsewhere. Eventually, he returned to Dallas, his hometown, and managed the burgeoning instructional television channel for the city’s school districts. Budget cuts canceled the television gig four years later, and Owens turned his presentation skills, his research ability and his larger-than-life extrovert’s personality (fitting for his imposing 6-foot-5-inch frame) toward helping his fellow Texans through the oil pipeline permitting process.

Building oil pipelines might seem a far cry from teaching history and government classes, but Owens asserts that his teaching skills assist his work in the energy sector.

"Pipeline projects take three and a half years to permit and nine months to build,” Owens said. "What are you doing those three years? Educating politicians, environmental groups and other groups…it’s mounds and mounds of paperwork, and if there’s one thing I learned in teaching, it’s how to keep up with paperwork.”

For the last several years, Owens has worked for the Pacific & Texas Corp., an energy platform company, becoming president of the Tempe-based business in 2001. Owens says his public-sector experience is an asset, not a liability, at his current job.

"As CEO, I’ll be in a meeting with people who are pure business or pure finance, and I’ll tell them, ‘you live in a bubble on Wall Street World — here’s the real world,’ ” he said. “Corporations use some form of education every day to succeed.”

To provide feedback on this article, click here.

Photo: Dave Tevis

Take Two
Randy Bigos
Jennifer Murray