Along with college pal Lee E. Sheehy '73, Rowe joined Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr.'s (D-N.C.) committee to investigate President Richard M. Nixon's "dirty tricks" and secret slush funds.

After working for Jimmy Carter's campaign and chairing the inaugural ball, Rowe concentrated on his course work at Georgetown Law and soon met his future wife, Lisa Adams, in 1977.

The two were not a natural match.

He had graduated from Harvard, she hailed from Yale. She was from New York, and he came from Washington.

"There were plenty of things to argue about," Adams says. "It was fun. It continues to be fun."

After graduating from Georgetown, Rowe practiced law for seven years, defending those "accused of all sorts of shenanigans," and had moved to New York by the time his 10-year Harvard reunion rolled around.

In his alumni statement in 1983, Rowe wrote that he would have laughed if someone had told him a decade earlier that he would be "working as a lawyer defending corporate executives accused of bribing, embezzling [and] stealing trade secrets."

Ultimately, Rowe discovered that straight litigation work was not for him, and he became general counsel for several Congressional committees by the late 80s.

Smiling broadly as he recalls working with Jim Brady and representative Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to "beat the NRA" with historic gun control legislation, Rowe says he never forgets his father's conviction that "the highest calling is public service."

Despite this calling, Rowe eventually chose to move outside the public sector to sway the Senate and rouse the House.

Opportunity knocked--twice.

The first time was in 1992, when NBC sought a new vice president based in Washington.

NBC's parent company, General Electric, had a "general preference for lawyers," Rowe explains, and he got an offer.

Rowe took the job after being assured by NBC's President and CEO Bob Wright that, even though Rowe was a newcomer to the industry, "this isn't rocket science."

After managing legislative matters for NBC for two years--including dealing with "the thorny issue of TV violence" on the Hill--Rowe was courted by Harvard.