In 1946, Thomas Lowder’s father was asked by the Alabama Farm Bureau to create an affordable fire insurance company for rural residents of the state. Edward Lowder launched Alabama Farm Bureau Insurance Company with just $10,000 and a secretary. You may now know the company as ALFA. As boys, Thomas and his brothers, James and Robert, watched their father create businesses from the ground up, with the insurance company as a foundation.
When teaching his sons about business, Edward often compared it to football. “He’d tell me that touchdowns are your long-term goal, but then, you have first downs to work toward in between, which are your short-term goals,” Thomas told Birmingham Business Journal. Edward also taught his sons to maintain strong ties with banks and lenders. But Thomas learned just as much on the job. The self-described “saleman of the family,” he recalled, in a Wall Street Journal article, “tagging along summers with an apartment agent who always carried two things in his pocket when showing units to a prospective tenant: a piece of chalk, to cover up any scratches in the paint, and a can of aerosol spray to freshen the air.”
These early experiences prepared Thomas Lowder for the leadership role that he would later assume. He is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Colonial Properties Trust, a New York Stock Exchange-listed, multi-family-focused real estate investment trust, with commercial assets in the Sunbelt region of the United States.
After graduating with honors from Auburn University with a Bachelor of Science degree, Lowder assumed the leadership role at Colonial Properties Trust in 1976. He took the business public in 1993. With Lowder as CEO, the company grew from $475 million in total market capitalization to $5.3 billion before he retired from active management in 2006 to care for his wife, Jarman, who was suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s.
Lowder returned as CEO in December 2008 to lead the company after the financial recession and Wall Street crisis. After 20 years as a public company, Colonial Properties merged with Mid-America Apartment Communities in 2013 and later Post Properties, Inc. to create one of the largest and most successful apartment real estate investment trusts on the NYSE with a market capitalization over $16 billion. Lowder continues to serve on the board of Mid-America Apartment Communities.
Active in his community and beyond, Lowder serves or has served as a member or chair of several boards, including Children’s Hospital of Alabama, the University of Alabama Health Services Foundation, the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, Quarterbacking Children’s Health Foundation, the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, the American Red Cross, and United Way of Central Alabama, among others. Lowder and his wife, Susan, whom he married in 2012, are active in philanthropic efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer’s, ALS, and other neurological diseases, which took the lives of each of their spouses.
Lowder holds an honorary doctorate of humanities from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an honorary doctorate of law from Birmingham-Southern College.
He has three daughters and Susan has three sons. They live in Birmingham, Alabama.
