Joel H Cowan was born on June 23, 1936, in Cartersville, Georgia, second son of Bernice and Charles A. and Cowan. His father owned an auto dealership, a 3000 acre farm outside the city, and became mayor of Cartersville in 1956. Cowan became a Boy Scout in his early years. He was recruited in 1951 to attend the first post-war Boy Scout World Jamboree in Bad Ischl, Austria. He was elected to be patrol leader of a group of Scouts for the trip. He spent most summers at the family farm while attending highschool. Among other high school honors, he became president of his senior class, was made “most popular boy,” played basketball, and was co-captain of the football team. In both sports Cowan’s teammate was the future-governor of Georgia, Joe Frank Harris.

He entered the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1954, majoring in Industrial Management. He lived on campus, only forty miles from Cartersville. He learned to fly while at Georgia Tech, and although he did not get his pilot’s license then, he leaned a lot about small planes and airports (In 1972 he became a serious pilot of his own plane with multi-engine and instrument ratings). In his senior year at Tech in spring 1957, Cowan was hired by a fraternity brother’s father, Pete Knox, Jr., to work for a new company, Fayette County Development Corporation. The position was unpaid but he was offered an apartment, paid to visit the site as needed, and build relationships.

It was also in 1957 that he met Geraldine “Geri” Mathews of rural Roswell. She was a secretary at Lockheed at Dobbins Air Force Base, and attended night school at Georgia State University. They wed on December 21st of that year. Married, and working for the FCDC, Joel Cowan graduated in Industrial Management from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1958. When Cowan graduated from Tech, there was no full-time paying job with the project. Mr. Knox hired him to work developing other projects for Knox Homes, allowing him to continue managing and trying to finance what was then called “New Town.”

In this effort, Cowan began looking for investors without much encouragement. But in 1958, while working for Knox, he and the Knox lawyer drafted a proposed bill for the Georgia House to incorporate the land into the City of Peachtree City. The language used was copied from a very old, out of date city charter, but it was workable. The legislative effort was successful, and House Bill 242 named Cowan as Mayor. Anticipating this, he built a new Knox home and moved to Peachtree City on January 2, 1959. Knox and Cowan’s friend, Governor Ernest Vandiver, signed the bill creating Peachtree City on March 9, 1959. Continuing the search for funding from the Knox office, he met many potential investors with no luck, but that effort led him to meet a New York broker named Judson Ackerman, who led him to Mr. James F. Riley. Riley, real estate Vice President of Bessemer Securities Corporation, came to visit Cowan and see the land (Peachtree City’s Riley Field is named after him). This friendship developed into Bessemer’s buying out the Knox group, and achieving 100% ownership. Peachtree Corporation of Georgia was created with twenty-three year old Joel Cowan made president, and Pete Knox made Chairman of the Board.

As the first Mayor of Peachtree City, Joel Cowan served from 1959 to 1965. Among other things, he was instrumental in the start of the infrastructure for the town including a water system, building roads, the formation of Lake Peachtree, and of Flat Creek Golf Club. These things were attractive to home buyers, particularly with the Atlanta airport’s rapid growth.

Eventually Cowan was made President-CEO of independent Phipps Land Company.The development of Phipps Plaza opened in Atlanta in 1969, under his leadership, as did Snapfinger Woods, a planned community in DeKalb County, and Northside 75, an Atlanta office park. He was also instrumental, by the early 1970s, in the development of Palmetto Dunes Resort on Hilton Head Island. Cowan resigned from Phipps in 1976, and began Cowan and Associates, and in 1984, he created the Habersham Group /Habersham Financial.

He was asked by his boyhood friend, Joe Frank Harris, to be his Campaign Chairman for his run to become the Governor of Georgia, and in 1983, Joel Cowan became Governor Harris’s Chief of Staff. He was entrusted to create several State initiatives consistent with the Governor’s initiatives including Chair of the Growth Strategies Commission in 1987. This was a continued effort of to study the problems of growth, Cowan having headed a similar effort for former Governor Carter. Governor Roy Barnes continued the planning work, appointing Cowan as Chair of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority and later, the North Georgia Water Planning District, both designed to deal with issues of multi-county growth.

Among other appointments he has held, Cowan was Chair or co-Chair of State Department of Community Affairs, the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday commission, the Community Foundation Fund, and the Georgia Board of Regents. At Georgia Institute of Technology, Joel Cowan is a trustee emeritus for the Georgia Tech Foundation, as well as an Adjunct Professor in the College of Management and also taught a class on international conflicts. He remains active and continues his involvement in numerous national and international non-profit economic developments. These include his twenty years with the Board of the EastWest Institute in New York, and chairing pioneering activities in former Soviet States, including the Carpathian Region and the Central Asia “Stans,” both of which continue to be independent and active. His philanthropic activities include serving on the board of the Metropolitan Atlanta Community Foundation Board. He and his wife Geri were charter members of the Fayette [County] Presbyterian Church and became founders of the First Presbyterian Church of Peachtree City.