During 20 years in academia, Dow authored or co-authored 19 social science research publications, developed curriculum and training programs for social services professionals, and managed longitudinal studies of human behavior. In 1995, he moved from academia to the private sector, where he worked for a small company that developed and maintained reservation systems for the travel industry. Here he learned the difference between writing research reports for scientific journals, writing technical specifications for programmers, and writing user guides for the people who actually needed to understand and use the software that his company produced. In his spare time, Dow and his wife Marlene enjoy birding and bird photography.