Ryan Bowman was raised in the world of construction.
That’s how it goes when your grandfather is Ralph Korte, the founder of The Korte Company.
Ryan is the son of Ralph’s eldest daughter, Susan Bowman, the company’s CFO. Growing up near company headquarters in Highland, Illinois, he sold a lot of Boy Scout popcorn in the office.
Ralph might’ve been a big boss at work, but Ryan remembers grandma being the one who “ran the ship” at home. Instead, he remembers Ralph as a kind grandfather with a shortlist of favorite jokes. He often took Ryan and his siblings to job sites, where they learned to value hard work and family pride while having fun with Grandpa.
“We lived a mile from grandma and grandpa and were there a lot,” he said. “And anytime that we were being maybe a bit too much for grandma, grandpa would be tasked with taking charge of us, and I’m not sure he knew any better way to entertain a bunch of kids than to take us around to job sites.”
Coming around on construction
But Ryan didn’t see his grandparents as much as a middle schooler. He didn’t need a babysitter anymore, and his grandparents were spending more time away from home.
So, despite his family legacy, Ryan wasn’t drawn to construction when he entered high school. Ryan’s father worked in real estate. And while his mother works for the company, she is an accountant, not a builder.
“When she came home, she didn’t have work stories about building buildings to talk about,” Ryan said. “She didn’t have a job site to take us to say, ‘Hey, I built that.’ So, it just wasn’t something ingrained into us.”
In school, Ryan excelled in math and science. This eventually led him to pursue industrial engineering at the University of Missouri, starting in 2012.
His education focused on optimizing processes. Little did he know that he’d later apply this skill as a project manager at The Korte Company.
As an industrial engineering student, Ryan got to work with a couple factories, plants and the University of Missouri Hospital as part of his Mizzou curriculum. But he never found a good fit and started to feel like manufacturing wasn’t right for him after all.
Ryan needed a new direction, and that eventually brought him back to a familiar place.
Taking a trial run in Las Vegas
It wasn’t until Ryan’s junior year of college that he seriously considered joining the family business, with some encouragement from his uncle, Todd Korte. But it came at the perfect time, offering Ryan the fresh opportunity he needed.
“Todd sat all of the cousins down at a family gathering and said, ‘Hey, just to let you guys know, there’s opportunity here if you want to take it.’”
After graduating in 2016, Ryan began a six-month trial position with The Korte Company in Las Vegas. Ryan was happy to start somewhere new, where nobody knew his about his family connections and he could truly prove himself.
That was until word got out when Mom and Dad came to visit the office on his first day.
“I guess I think I’m the only person that brought their mom and dad with them to their first day of work.” Still, Ryan didn’t want to fall back on his family name, wanting to succeed on his own merits.
He embraced a steep learning curve, working long hours as the field engineer on a 232-unit apartment project.
“In Vegas, I made a goal to be on-site all time,” he said. “We did concrete pours at night. We’d start those at 9 or 10 at night, and then the rest of the workers would show up during the day. So those were 15, 16 hour days.”
Since he didn’t have much construction experience, Ryan had to learn by doing and following others. That’s why his advice to new hires is, “Don’t feel afraid to be dumb. Ask questions. If you see someone doing something, ask why.”
He was initially supposed to spend three months in the office and three in the field, but Ryan was getting too much done in the field to leave.
After all, they had a $32 million contract to deal with. And The Job is The Boss.
“I stayed out in the field because the project needed it,” he said. “We were into the hundreds and hundreds of RFI’s.”
What started as a six-month trial period became a two-year project that ended in 2018.
Working hard, from Las Vegas to Florida
Ryan’s curiosity and drive helped him develop quickly in the industry.
After proving himself in Las Vegas, he was sent to help with a Department of Defense project in Florida, where he worked his way up to project manager.
Ryan was proud to work on an F-35 Integrated Training Center at Eglin Air Force Base. Initially, he was hired as a project engineer and acted as the on-site project manager, overseeing quality control. As team members left for other projects, Ryan took on additional responsibilities, effectively leading the project through its final phases.
During this time, Ryan gained experience writing contracts, managing subcontractors and coordinating with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Ryan was formally promoted to project manager as the project wrapped up in 2021. He then returned to Las Vegas, where he managed larger and larger projects, putting his capabilities and commitment to the company’s values on display. And he still is. Ryan’s work has now taken him from coast to coast. He is leading a project in California, serving dual roles as project manager and superintendent. This requires him to commute weekly from his home in Las Vegas, working on-site in California from Monday through Thursday.
The project is particularly demanding. Ryan has to manage both the administrative and on-the-ground responsibilities. But this has its benefits. Balancing these roles allows him to stay deeply involved in the project’s progress and directly oversee the work.
Family legacy: Moving ahead while looking back
Today, Ryan is focused on improving as a leader, building his reputation on hard work and know-how rather than family connections.
At home with his dog Bella, Ryan keeps a balanced life — going to the gym, gaming, and staying connected with friends and family.
It isn’t too hard to stay connected to Grandpa Ralph. He often stops by the office, still interested in everyone’s work. But he’s also respectful of people’s time, sometimes hesitating if he sees them busy on the phone. Because Ralph knows work is more important than schmoozing with the former boss.
“I always tell people, ‘He’s not trying to be rude, he’s trying to be considerate,’” Ryan said. “He understands people’s time and how valuable it is.”
Their ongoing work remains a part of Ralph’s legacy, and that’s what drives Ryan to keep growing and succeeding. His ultimate goal is to advance the family business, perhaps one day even lead it. But he’s committed to earning that responsibility on his own terms.
“My grandpa liked to show off all the things that he did. And it’s a joke that we always have in our family: He’d be driving around. He’d point at something and say, ‘I built that, I built that, I built that.’ And we’d always make fun of him. But now kind of being involved in it a little bit, you understand why. You spend a lot of time, spent a lot of heartache on some of these projects, so you understand why.”
