Dr. Willie Earl Fowler became a Certified Football Scout in January of 2025 and a Certified NFLPA Agent in October of 2025. After working as a teaching professional at NIU, Illinois and Parkland College, Dr. Fowler is armed with over 30 years of teaching, researching, writing and mentoring experience; he is currently serving on the Doctoral Dissertation Committee of a former NFL player, Darian Tate, formerly of the Carolina Panthers, at the University of Southern California as an outside contributor. This is just one of many examples of Dr. Fowler’s lifelong commitment to serving student-athletes even after their playing days are finished. 

Dr. Fowler attended the prestigious Whitney Young High School on the West Side of Chicago consistently ranked as one of the Top 5 Public High Schools in Illinois and one of the top high schools in the entire country. Importantly, Dr. Fowler received his Bachelor’s degree in Public Law in 1990, a Masters in Public Administration with High Honors, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Northern Illinois University. Following that, he received his Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 2000.
Dr. Fowler started his career as a Public Works and Administrative Intern working for the City of DeKalb in successive years. During his second year there, he reported directly to the Assistant City Manager, but the City Manager dedicated significant time mentoring him as well, impressed with his efforts. Thus, the City Manager gave Dr. Fowler the incredible opportunity to help in the negotiation of the Federation of Police contract negotiations. To arm the City Manager with sufficient data that he could use in the negotiation, Fowler contacted over 50 comparable cities. His hard work allowed the City Manager and the outside legal counsel to build credible arguments based on the weight of the evidence which led to the Federation of Police (FOP) members accepting a fair and reasonable wage increase. After graduating from the NIU MPA program with High Honors, Fowler entered the Ph.D. Political Science program with an emphasis on Public Administration. During his time in this program, he focused his time on City Management, Organizational Development (Personnel) and Public Policy.  

As a newly admitted Doctoral student, he secured a highly coveted appointment with the NIU Center for Governmental Studies/Social Science Research Institute where he spent three years honing his research and data analysis skills under the tutelage of premier social scientists. While serving in this position, the State of Illinois awarded him with the prestigious ICEOP Scholarship award which carried with it a $40,000 award ($10,000/yr for four years). Additionally, NIU appointed Dr. Fowler to the Illinois Board of Regents (which represented the University of Illinois at Springfield (then called Sangamon State University), Illinois State University and NIU). As a member of the Illinois Board of Regents the President of NIU (John E. LaTourette) and the NIU Student Senate President (Charlotte Chambers) had invited him to travel to away football games with the presidential entourage on their chartered jet. These very trips with the President of NIU and his cabinet and the NIU football team sparked an interest in Dr. Fowler in becoming an NFL agent. Fowler would travel to away games with the players a few times a year as the Student Regent, and again upon his appointment to the first NIU Student Trustee the following year, when the Governor of the state decentralized all the governing boards. When traveling with the student-athletes, Fowler witnessed how they prepared to travel, the process for their arrival on the rival team’s campus, the joint meeting of the entourages for each school, the game day activities, among other things.  During these activities, Dr. Fowler forged a strong working relationship with the President of NIU, Sr. Vice President of Administration and Finance, Dr. Eddie Williams and his team, allowing him to later negotiate a landmark $100,000,000 package of student focused campus-wide improvements.

Indeed, these tough negotiations demonstrated that Dr. Fowler is kind and caring but extremely demanding, especially when precious financial resources were involved. He is tough, tenacious, fearless, is very attentive to detail, possesses impeccable integrity and is ready to combine common sense and smart data to make the case for you in your negotiation. As the youngest of 12 children, reared in a two-parent household by loving parents who were married for more than 50 years, Fowler grew into the man he is today, of deep faith and principles, and an incredible athlete to boot. However, his dreams of becoming a Major League Baseball Pitcher for the Chicago Cubs were shattered when a drunk driver ran a red light as Fowler crossed the street, on his way to the last day (Decision Day) of Baseball Tryouts. He spent several weeks during his junior year in the hospital recovering, and ever since that time, he dedicated his career to serving others forevermore. More specifically, Dr. Fowler has organized, planned, fully funded and implemented well over 100 social, educational and community centered programs as a young professional at NIU, UIUC, Parkland College and as a Congressional Fellow for the US Senate. For these efforts, Dr. Fowler has won more than 50 awards, honors and special recognitions including Omega-Man-of-the-Decade from Iota Delta Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Incorporated at Northern Illinois University. If you want someone who gets it right every single time, you want Dr. Fowler. When you build a business relationship with Dr. Fowler, you are building a strong bond that will last for a lifetime.