Joe Rowley founded Hometown Marketing in Caldwell, Idaho, after leaving a career in journalism. The business brings together a broad base of skills that Joe has developed over the years, and puts them to use creating maps that help promote growing communities and the businesses that thrive in them.

Joe started on what would eventually become his career path in the eighth grade when he picked up his first camera. He worked in various capacities on school newspaper and yearbook staffs during his high school years, including three years during which he was photo editor. He continued his journalism work in college at BYU Idaho (then Ricks College) and Utah State University, again serving in various leadership positions on newspaper staffs as he pursued a degree in print journalism.

Before graduating from college, Joe moved into professional daily newspapers as a reporter at the Herald Journal in Logan, Utah, and completed a reporting internship at the Deseret News in Salt Lake City. After covering county and state government at the Herald Journal he moved back into photography along with a move to the Idaho Press-Tribune in Nampa, Idaho. At the Press-Tribune, he quickly moved into another photo editor position. It was from that position that he moved on to found Hometown Marketing.