Executive Director Search Announcement
The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family is pleased to announce the opening of a search for its next Executive Director. We have engaged Bailey Clark HR Consulting, LLC, as the Executive Search firm.
This search comes at an important juncture in the Center’s development, as the Center looks to expand and deepen its strategic direction. Building upon a distinguished history of advancing Bowen Family Systems Theory, the Center is looking toward its next generation of scholarly leadership, education, organizational development, and contribution to the broader scientific and professional communities.
The Executive Director reports to the Board of Directors and will provide organizational leadership in partnership with the Board of Directors, faculty, staff, and the broad Bowen Theory Network. The Board is seeking a leader who understands that the strength of an institution depends not simply upon the decisions of an individual leader, but upon the capacity of its people to think, collaborate, assume responsibility, develop innovative ideas and function effectively together.
Strategic Direction
The Executive Director will help lead the Center in advancing several interconnected strategic priorities, to include:
Scholarly leadership in the continued development of Bowen Family Systems Theory with strengthened connections with relevant scientific disciplines and communities.
Educational excellence through rigorous, innovative, and accessible programs that deepen understanding and application of theory.
Faculty Development and generational succession, cultivating the capabilities and opportunities necessary for emerging scholars, teachers, clinicians, other practitioners, and organizational leaders to assume increasing responsibility.
Leadership Succession, strengthening the Center’s capacity to develop leadership across generations rather than depending disproportionately upon certain individuals.
Financial stewardship and institutional viability, ensuring that resources, programs, and internal processes create organizational resilience and align with mission and strategy.
Expanding global reach, strengthening relationships across the international Bowen Theory community, and creating new opportunities for connection, learning, scholarship, and collaboration.
The Executive Director We Seek
Functional Leadership Capacities The Board and Center seek an Executive Director who brings both strong organizational leadership capability and a serious commitment to continued development of self. The successful candidate will demonstrate the capacity to:
Think systemically, and resist reducing complex organizational challenges to personalities, isolated events, or simple solutions.
Promote inquiry over reaction; separate data from opinion; encourage the expression of multiple viewpoints and create an environment in which disagreement can improve thinking.
Build connections across faculty, disciplines, programs, and generations; build partnerships inside and outside the Center and communicate vision with clarity, fostering a sense of shared purpose.
Maintain clarity of mission and purpose, making thoughtful decisions during periods of uncertainty, disagreement or heightened organizational anxiety.
Facilitate development of others, delegating responsibility, and creating opportunities for responsibility, leadership, scholarship, teaching, and professional growth.
Strengthening systems, clarifying roles, and developing repeatable processes, building institutional resilience.
Connect the Center’s scholarly work with developments in the broader scientific community, encouraging continuous theoretical and scientific development.
Exercise disciplined financial stewardship while identifying opportunities for sustainable growth and innovation.
Represent the Center effectively within national and international professional, scholarly, and educational communities.
Differentiation of Self and Leadership Formation
Because differentiation of self lies at the core of Bowen Theory, the Center regards the continuing development of the leader’s own functioning as integral to the Executive Director role.
We therefore seek an individual committed to ongoing work on self; someone capable of observing his/her own functioning within an emotional system, examining his/her contribution to organizational and relationship patterns, and continuing to develop greater clarity of principle and responsibility for self. Important formative characteristics include:
Differentiation of Self: Commitment to maintaining thoughtful, principled functioning while remaining meaningfully connected to others.
Intellectual Humility: Recognizing the limits of one’s own knowledge and remaining open to data, challenge, and revision of one’s thinking.
Courage: Acts from principle despite anxiety and address difficult issues directly. Able to make unpopular but important decisions despite reactivity from others.
Emotional Maturity: Regulates emotional reactivity well enough to think and act effectively under pressure.
Integrity: Aligns principles, values, words, and actions with transparency and accountability. Demonstrates reliability, transparency, accountability, discernment, and ethical consistency.
Curiosity: Engages in continual learning and interdisciplinary exploration. Demonstrates scientific and intellectual curiosity and openness to new ideas.
Humility: Places the mission and institutional success above personal recognition.
Perseverance: Recognizes that meaningful organizational, theoretical, and cultural development requires sustained effort over time.
Self-observation: Examines one’s own functioning without excessive defensiveness, self-criticism or blame of others.
The Organizational Culture We Aspire to Strengthen
The Executive Director will play a key role in advancing a Center culture in which thinking is stimulated rather than prescribed.
We aspire to an organizational culture in which people can raise questions, examine assumptions, develop novel ideas, disagree thoughtfully, and take responsibility for their own positions while remaining connected to one another.
We envision a Center in which collaboration does not require agreement; autonomy does not require distance; leadership is not synonymous with control; and differentiation of self is not only a concept taught, but an ongoing aspiration reflected in how the organization and its people function.
The Executive Director will have an opportunity to help shape the next chapter of an institution with a distinctive intellectual heritage and an increasingly global community. We seek a leader interested not simply in managing that institution, but in strengthening its capacity to continue learning, developing, and contributing across generations.
Apply:
Please use this link to access the full job description.
Interested candidates should submit a resume, cover letter, and complete an application using the link below.
Information
Review of candidates will begin October 15, 2026
Questions may be directed to: recruit.bchrconsulting@gmail.com
The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family is an equal opportunity employer.