Meet Janet Cowell
An experienced public servant and business leader with a record of bringing people together to accomplish positive, progressive change.
Janet has proven she can bring positive, progressive change to Raleigh and North Carolina by working in partnership with the community. She’s done this as a Raleigh City Councilor, a North Carolina State Senator, the State Treasurer, and now as the President and CEO of the nonprofit Dix Park Conservancy, which is partnered with the City of Raleigh to create Dix Park.
In these roles, she ensured the AAA bond rating for North Carolina and Raleigh through diligent oversight of taxes, spending, and debt. She protected our environment and neighborhoods by establishing a stormwater program to prevent flooding, preventing development in our drinking supply watershed, protecting trees and expanding recycling. She also established mental health parity in the state health plan and supported early efforts at community policing to keep our community safe. She’s worked to make sure both public and private boards and the leaders of organizations look like the communities they serve by increasing the number of women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals.
Janet was inspired to go into public service by the example set by her parents. Her father was a United Methodist minister and her mother was a school teacher. They showed her every day that building a strong community comes from being engaged and helping those in need. As a result, Janet had early exposure to issues of community poverty, hunger, and the unhoused. Her father’s work required frequent moves. As a result, she had the opportunity to experience how different communities responded to community problems.
Janet is running for Mayor because she knows we need a Raleigh that works together for everyone. To achieve it we need to strengthen our partnerships with the state and county governments, nonprofits, and the business community to both tackle immediate issues and plan for the future. We need to address issues of housing, planning and growth, environmental protection and resilience, public safety, homelessness, and mental health.
Janet will be a Mayor who listens to people, works hard, and does the right thing by working with everyone in our community.
In her teens and twenties, Janet studied and worked abroad in Germany, China, Indonesia, and Hong Kong. Through these travels, she saw extreme poverty, as well as restrictions on the rights and freedoms we enjoy in the United States. She earned an MBA with the belief that applying business skills to social issues would help her create change at scale. She worked in the investment finance industry and moved to Raleigh in 1997, where she took the values she learned from her parents and combined them with the education and experiences she had to run for Raleigh City Council.
Taking the oath to serve on the Raleigh City Council
Janet's family outside the United Methodist Church
Janet at the Red Square in Moscow, Russia
Meet Janet Cowell
An experienced public servant and business leader with a record of bringing people together to accomplish positive, progressive change.
Janet has proven she can bring positive, progressive change to Raleigh and North Carolina by working in partnership with the community. She’s done this as a Raleigh City Councilor, a North Carolina State Senator, the State Treasurer, and now as the President and CEO of the nonprofit Dix Park Conservancy, which is partnered with the City of Raleigh to create Dix Park.
In these roles, she ensured the AAA bond rating for North Carolina and Raleigh through diligent oversight of taxes, spending, and debt. She protected our environment and neighborhoods by establishing a stormwater program to prevent flooding, preventing development in our drinking supply watershed, protecting trees and expanding recycling. She also established mental health parity in the state health plan and supported early efforts at community policing to keep our community safe. She’s worked to make sure both public and private boards and the leaders of organizations look like the communities they serve by increasing the number of women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals.
Janet was inspired to go into public service by the example set by her parents. Her father was a United Methodist minister and her mother was a school teacher. They showed her every day that building a strong community comes from being engaged and helping those in need. As a result, Janet had early exposure to issues of community poverty, hunger, and the unhoused. Her father’s work required frequent moves. As a result, she had the opportunity to experience how different communities responded to community problems.
Taking the oath to serve on the Raleigh City Council
Janet is running for Mayor because she knows we need a Raleigh that works together for everyone. To achieve it we need to strengthen our partnerships with the state and county governments, nonprofits, and the business community to both tackle immediate issues and plan for the future. We need to address issues of housing, planning and growth, environmental protection and resilience, public safety, homelessness, and mental health.
Janet will be a Mayor who listens to people, works hard, and does the right thing by working with everyone in our community.
At the Red Square in Moscow, Russia
Janet's Family outside the United Methodist Church
In her teens and twenties, Janet studied and worked abroad in Germany, China, Indonesia, and Hong Kong. Through these travels, she saw extreme poverty, as well as restrictions on the rights and freedoms we enjoy in the United States. She earned an MBA with the belief that applying business skills to social issues would help her create change at scale. She worked in the investment finance industry and moved to Raleigh in 1997, where she took the values she learned from her parents and combined them with the education and experiences she had to run for Raleigh City Council.