After receiving his BS in Business Administration with a minor in engineering from UT Austin in 1960, author Dean McGowan began his journey in wealth management as a financial advisor and mutual and pension funds manager with Schneider, Bernet & Hickman, where he was the youngest partner in the firm throughout the early seventies. In 1974 McGowan joined Paine Weber as assistant branch manager and went on to found the North Dallas branch of what later became UBS Financial Services. Before retiring from UBS in 2019, McGowan would also found the McGowan, Vehslage, and Goldberg advisory group (MVG Wealth Management).

McGowan also proudly served three years on the New York Stock Exchange committee, during which he and other committee members rewrote the entire battery of three thousand questions for the Series 7 (General Securities Representative) Exam, whose passing completion is required by brokers and other financial professionals in the U.S.

Volunteering in his community has remained equally important to McGowan. For ten years he served as a board member of the UT Dallas Naveen Jindal School of Management in Richardson, Texas, where he mentored MBS students for eight years and served as a member of the school's financial department for four.

McGowan has additionally been grateful to have had the privilege of serving as Treasurer, Chairman of the Elders, and Chairman of the Board for Community Christian Church in Richardson, as well as teaching Sunday school and serving in a lifestyle-coaching role for several years at Christ United Methodist Church's Project Hope in the city of Plano.