 Bowman has designed social surveys on political and moral culture that were fielded by the Gallup Organization and was a statistical software consultant for SYSTAT Software.Born in 1957, the second of four children born to Fred M. Bowman, a minister in the Church of the Brethren, and Wanda Martin Bowman, an elementary school teacher, Bowman moved with his family to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia at the age of five.Except for short periods in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Spain, he has lived in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains for most of his life.