American Insitute of Architects AIA Georgia Presidency

Service to your profession means different things to each of us and it should. My “active service” to AIA culminated after 25 years, with my elevation to AIA Georgia President. 

I look back with enormous pride on this achievement! I believe we all (each and every one of us) have the power to make Planet Earth, not just the built environment, a better place for our children and grandchildren. To share my strengths in that endeavor was and is an inescapable compulsion. I do miss AIA leadership and the opportunity for collaboration with the nationwide network of talented colleagues and now friends.

I continue to enjoy my service to others. After 6 years on the Board of the Ogeechee RiverKeeper, I now head their Paddling Outreach program. I enjoy singing with the choir at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist and love the ministry of music. I am an adjunct professor of architecture at the Savannah College of Art and Design, teaching Studio Design. I am enjoying guiding and mentoring young architecture students, who are the future of our profession.

My passion for designing distinctive homes continues. I love working with great clients in my beautiful, southeastern, low country environment. My firm Cowart Group Architects is smaller now. I’m both enjoying being back on the design/drafting table and am challenged by having to wear more hats and learn new skills.

I now have my first grandchild, who is already 7 weeks old!  For the first time in my professional life, I want to slow down a bit. I want to spend more time enjoying little Isabelle Katherine, my two grown daughters Betsy and Emily, and exploring this new stage of our family life with my wife of 35 years, Sally.

I count myself among the very lucky! A big part of that luck is the result of my involvement in service to my profession through AIA leadership. In 1989, I won my first AIA Design Excellence Award. It was THAT feeling that really sparked my commitment to serving and giving back.

I am very thankful!  In my life, sure there has been some disappointment and even pain, but hard work and the love for what I do have borne bountiful fruit.  I believe this fruit can best be enjoyed when picked just before it ripens.