Steve Rowley

Stephen M. Rowley is president of Cox Automotive, a global automotive services and software company whose vision is to transform the way the world buys, sells, owns and uses cars. Rowley is responsible for a family of brands that together make car dealers more successful and car buyers more satisfied, including auto industry leaders such as Autotrader, Dealer.com, Dealertrack, Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, NextGear Capital, vAuto and Xtime.

Rowley previously served as the executive vice president of Cox Business. In this role, he was responsible for the strategic direction of the high-growth division that delivered more than $2 billion in annual revenue. He oversaw all sales, operations, product development and marketing for business customers, including wholesale services for telecom carriers. Prior to leading Cox Business, Rowley was the vice president of sales and field operations for Cox Business’ western U.S. markets where he served as the chief liaison between corporate headquarters and the western markets with oversight on local strategic planning, sales performance, marketing, back office, customer installations and capital investment. 

Prior to joining Cox Business, Rowley was vice president of alliances and partners at Sprint, where he managed relationships with more than 500 partners, generating $250 million in annual revenue.  In addition, Rowley was responsible for the strategic direction of the Telemetry group where he negotiated and managed contracts with Dell, Sony, HP and others.   In his 11 years with Sprint, Rowley held key senior leadership roles in the sales organizations as vice president of enterprise, vice president of general business and vice president of sales for Sprint’s Broadband Division.

In addition to extensive telecommunications experience, Rowley spent 12 years as a key executive at People’s Choice TV, having held positions such as vice president general manager of Chicago, Tucson and Phoenix and later, the vice president of sales and operations for the company. 

He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Iowa State University.  Rowley is married to Susan and they have three children, Timothy, Collin Patrick and Maggie.