Mike Rowe

Who He Was

Mike Rowe grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of a teacher and a contractor, and spent years working as a television host before the job that would define his public career found him in a sewage treatment plant in San Francisco. Starting in 2003, his series Dirty Jobs took him into over 300 skilled and technical workplaces across the country, from crab fishing boats to coal mines to electrical plants, where he worked alongside the people who do the jobs most Americans never think about. What began as a television show became a platform for advocacy, and in 2008, Rowe founded the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which has awarded more than six million dollars in scholarships to students pursuing career and technical education and skilled trades training. He has testified before the United States Senate on the skills gap in the American workforce and spoken at hundreds of schools, companies, and industry events about the value of hands-on technical careers. His public profile has done more than almost anyone else's to shift how Americans think about the relationship between education, work, and dignity.

Why He Matters

For two decades, Rowe has made a loud, public, and effective case that the careers CTE teachers prepare students for are among the most essential, skilled, and rewarding paths available. His foundation has put real money behind that argument, funding scholarships for students who chose welding, healthcare technology, electrical work, and dozens of other CTE pathways and helping thousands of young people pursue careers they might otherwise have talked themselves out of. The teachers who work in CTE classrooms every day are doing the same work on a smaller stage, and Rowe's advocacy has helped build a cultural moment in which that work is getting the recognition it deserves. For students considering CTE pathways, his career is a reminder that the people who show up, develop real skills, and do the work that holds everything else together have always had something worth pursuing. The CTE teachers who shaped the workers he met along the way are, in many respects, the unsung version of the same story he has been telling for twenty years.