Spotlight: Danielle Bowman on not being afraid to carve her own path

Danielle Bowman didn’t always know what she wanted out of her career, but she wasn’t afraid to explore multiple avenues. 

The North Carolina native pursued several paths before reaching her current position as chief people officer at Charles Aris Inc. She says opening herself up to different experiences allowed her to carve a way towards her most important professional passion: people.

Coming from a nontraditional background

While Bowman did not attend a traditional four-year college, she knew learning relevant skills and educating herself would be an integral part of finding the “why” in her professional life.

In one of her first transformative positions, Danielle assisted in implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for a global manufacturing company. Here, she got experience training her peers and took an interest in expanding her knowledge in the tools and processes that were impacting their roles. This led her to begin taking classes on systems, applications and processes (SAP) to learn as much as possible.

“I had a deep desire to support our team through the big changes in a meaningful way,” Bowman explained. “Leaning into what they needed ultimately led me to find my passion for serving others professionally.”

Between pursuing classes outside of work and getting a taste of learning and training in the office, she formed a deeper interest in pursuing HR. Bowman began volunteering herself to take on more responsibility across multiple HR disciplines, which led to several roles in “small-but-mighty” HR departments.

Rising in the ranks

Bowman recalled taking a professional step back in her career to be part of a core team charged with launching an e-commerce business within their company. While it did not match the natural progression expected for her role, it allowed Bowman to gain new insights, experiences and skills.

Building the business from the ground up, designing the operational processes and hiring the team to run the business led to a true understanding of how business and people could operate together successfully. Their success afforded her the opportunity to join the core teams in the organization’s build outs for Europe and Asia. Traveling the world, she also developed a broader understanding of people and values outside the U.S.

Another turning point for Bowman was when she led a 360-leadership process for the senior vice presidents at her then company. Not only did she enjoy working with them on their own development paths, but she also saw the benefit of connecting that to the strategic needs of the company. This initiative fueled a desire to lead transformative HR initiatives. 

In 2020, Bowman joined Charles Aris as vice president of human capital and organizational development. This role required her to take on all aspects of HR in a holistic way, leading firm-wide initiatives, organizational design strategies, internal talent acquisition and more.

She noted that the “rules are always changing in HR,” and her experience starting at Charles Aris during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic gave her an opportunity to embrace sweeping changes to American work life. In 2021, Bowman led the initiative to launch a permanent “choose-where-you-work” model of business for Charles Aris employees.

Now, Bowman is celebrating a recent promotion to chief people officer at Charles Aris. She noted that this position required her to lay her own foundation, but she’s accustomed to this, and looks forward to further embracing a dynamic and multifaceted approach to HR.