About Me

Ben Bowman grew up attending the Tigard-Tualatin School District (TTSD). Today, he serves as Chair of the Tigard-Tualatin School Board. His mom was a high school English teacher and his dad worked for the post office; his parents taught him to have integrity, to fight hard for what you believe in, and to understand the importance of public education.

He later earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon and his master’s degree in education policy from Stanford University. Ben is a 7th generation Oregonian with deep roots in Tigard.

In his day job, he works in education policy where he has led complex, equity-focused work at the Oregon Department of Education. Previously, he worked for former Rep. Margaret Doherty, who represented Tigard in the legislature for over a decade.

Ben is openly gay, but did not come out until he was out of high school. When he got to college, he dated his first boyfriend in secret for six months until he finally built up the courage to tell his friends and family. He now lives in Tigard with his partner, Juan, and their dog, Oso.

Ben previously served on the board of the Oregon Safe Schools and Communities Coalition and as Vice Chair of the Democratic Party of Oregon’s LGBTQ+ Caucus. He believes we have an obligation to make our schools and our society safer for all people to be who they are.

As Board Chair, Ben has helped move the Tigard-Tualatin School District forward in supporting students’ social, emotional and mental health needs as well as enhancing educational equity and academic achievement. Under his leadership (and with his fellow district leaders), TTSD has achieved its highest graduation rates of all time and some of its smallest class sizes ever.

Working alongside students and district leaders, Ben passed TTSD’s first-ever “Educational Equity and Racial Justice” policy and the model “Hate Speech and Bias Incident” policy to expose and eradicate injustice in the system. Additionally, he helped pass a period product access policy that requires menstrual hygiene products to be made available to students, free of charge.

Bowman also helped eliminate student “pay-to-play” fees (a $225 charge per student, per sport to participate in athletics) and secured an investment of $200,000 to make extracurricular activities such as art and music more accessible. He co-founded Packed with Pride at the beginning of the pandemic, which grew into one of the largest food distribution programs in the region.