Brief biography of Bill Owens, Nortel CEO.
Bill Owens, 65, was CEO and chairman of Teledesic LLC and president, COO and vice chairman of Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), the U.S.’s largest employee-owned high-technology company. Before joining SAIC, Owens was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the second-highest ranking military officer in the U.S.
Widely recognized for bringing commercial high technology into the Department of Defense for military applications, Owens was the architect of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), an advanced systems technology approach to military operations. Earlier in his military career, he served as commander of the Navy’s largest submarine group with 20 strategic ballistic missile submarines, 45 nuclear attack submarines, and more than 15,000 men and women. Owens has written more than 50 articles on national security and authored the book High Seas. His latest book, Lifting the Fog of War, was published in April 2000. He is a 1962 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He has a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University and a master’s in management from George Washington University.
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