Mike Rowe
Executive Producer, Host & Best-Selling Author
Mike Rowe
Executive Producer, Host & Best-Selling Author
Biography
From the Baltimore Opera to QVC shopping channel, executive producer, host, and best-selling author Mike Rowe has had hundreds of jobs and relished his role as a chronic freelancer.
He’s best known as the “dirtiest man on TV,” a title he earned on the hit TV series Dirty Jobs. Mike and the original Dirty Jobs crew have since set out on a road trip to revisit past jobbers and share never-before-told stories in a brand-new four-part series, Dirty Jobs: Rowe’d Trip. In what can only be described as an envelope mix up, Mike won an Emmy in the category for Outstanding Host for a Daytime Program for his work on Facebook’s groundbreaking series Returning the Favor, where Mike searches for remarkable people making a difference in their communities. You can also listen to him on The Way I Heard It, America’s #1 short-form podcast of five-minute mysteries for the curious mind with a short attention span; read his New York Times best-selling book The Way I Heard It, a mix of biography and auto-biography based on his popular podcast; or watch him on the TV series Somebody’s Gotta Do It on TBN.
As the country’s leading advocate for skilled labor and the CEO of the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity that debunks myths and misperceptions about the trades and helps close the skills gap, his foundation has granted millions of dollars in work ethic scholarships. In his spare time, Mike keeps a lively conversation with more than 5 million Facebook friends, where he talks about everything from the musings of his persnickety terrier named Freddy to the merits and pitfalls of blind patriotism.
Speaker Videos
TED: Learning From Dirty Jobs
SkillsUSA’s Opening Ceremony Speech
Speech Topics
Why Dirty Jobs Matter
Why has America declared a war on work? In this talk, Mike Rowe gives an illuminating account of the true nature of skilled labor, and why it’s being devalued by the media, advertising, and even the government. Why are people who do dirty jobs some of the happiest people you’ll ever meet? How do they achieve a work-life symmetry others can’t? What lessons can we learn about teamwork, determination, efficiency, and our definition of success? With conviction, humor and deep humanity, Mike Rowe brings us face-to-face with Americans who are simply doing their jobs, happily and well. In the process, he reminds us of the enormous but forgotten benefits of hard, honest work, and how it affects everything from our national identity to our infrastructure to the economy.