Tommy Sowers

The Honorable Tommy Sowers, Ph.D., serves as Vice Chancellor for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development and Chief Innovation Officer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He brings cross-sector leadership to strengthen Carolina’s innovation ecosystem, scaling its research commercialization pipeline, expanding startup formation and deepening partnerships with industry, venture capital and public-sector collaborators. His work aligns Carolina’s innovation infrastructure into a more cohesive, high-impact system.

With experience spanning academia, building public and venture-backed companies, national security innovation and public-sector leadership, Sowers works across sectors to accelerate how Carolina translates discovery into real-world solutions that drive economic growth.

Before Carolina, Sowers was director of graduate studies and deputy director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society. His teaching paired interdisciplinary student teams with technology challenges from organizations including the N.C. Governor’s Office, SAS, OpenAI and NIH. Appointed by Gov. Josh Stein, he currently serves on the NC AI Leadership Council.

Previously, Sowers was president of North Carolina-based flyExclusive, the country’s third-largest private jet operator. From 2018 to 2021, he served as Southeast regional director for the Department of Defense’s National Security Innovation Network and Defense Innovation Unit. As founder and CEO of GoldenKey, he created a technology-driven alternative for Americans to buy and sell homes without traditional real estate commissions.

From 2012 to 2014, Sowers served as an assistant secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs. One of the youngest Senate-confirmed assistant secretaries in the federal government, he set the department’s national communications strategy and oversaw public engagement and intergovernmental relations with all 50 states, U.S. territories and tribal governments. Earlier, he was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company.

An 11-year U.S. Army combat veteran, Sowers led a combat engineering platoon in Kosovo and deployed twice to Iraq as a Green Beret, leading and advising U.S. and Iraqi units on counterinsurgency operations. He also served as an assistant professor in the social sciences department at the United States Military Academy.

Sowers earned his undergraduate degree in public policy from Duke University and his master’s and doctorate from the London School of Economics.