Owens began his career as a nuclear submariner. He served on four strategic nuclear-powered submarines and three nuclear attack submarines, including tours as commanding officer aboard the and. Owens spent a total of 4,000 days aboard submarines, including duty in Vietnam. Owens was a senior military assistant to Secretaries of DefenseFrank Carlucci and Dick Cheney, and director of the Office of Program Appraisal for the Secretary of the Navy. He also served as the deputy chief of Naval Operations for Resources, Warfare Requirements and Assessments, from 1991 to 1993. Owens served as Commander of the United States Sixth Fleet from 1990 to 1992, which included during Operation Desert Storm. He was appointed to Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second-ranking military office in the United States, by Bill Clinton in March 1994. He retired in 1996. In April 2000, Owens co-authored Lifting the Fog of War with Edward Offley.
Awards and decorations
Business career
After leaving the navy, Owens served as president, chief operating officer and vice chairman of Science Applications International Corporation. In August 1999, Owens served as vice chairman and co-chief executive officer of Teledesic LLC, a satellite communications company. In June 2003, he became the chairman and chief executive officer. On April 28, 2004, Owens became the chief executive officer of Nortel, where he had previously served on the board of directors since February 2002. Owens stepped in to replace Frank Dunn, who was fired following an investigation into financial reporting. Owens served until November 15, 2005, when he was succeeded by Mike Zafirovski. On April 1, 2006, Owens became the Chairman and CEO of AEA Holdings Asia overseeing all Private Equity, and Real Estate investments in Asia. Admiral Owens is also a chairman of privately held Intelius, an information commerce company based in Bellevue, Washington. Owens serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Polycom Inc., Daimler Chrysler AG, Embarq, Intelius, and Force 10. Since July 1, 2006, Owens has also served as a director of an Indian global information technology services company called Wipro. In July 2009, Owens assumed the post of non-executive Chairman of US telecommunications company, CenturyLink. In August 2009, one month after his appointment at CenturyLink, Owens founded Amerilink Telecom Corp., a US telecommunications consultancy which partnered with China's Huawei Technologies in an effort to win a major contract with Sprint for its multibillion-dollar network upgrade project. Amerilink's role in this effort appears to have been to provide independent verification by trusted Americans that Huawei Technologies would not represent a security threat to the U.S. as well as to monitor Huawei Technologies activities on an ongoing basis were it to win the contract. In addition to Admiral Owens, the Amerilink Board included Gordon England, who served as deputy secretary of defense and homeland security under former President George W. Bush, former Majority Leader in the US House of Representatives, Richard Gephardt, and former World Bank PresidentJames Wolfensohn. Huawei Technologies provided considerable guarantees concerning security concerns, included offering to convey its code to security officials. But security concerns prevailed and may help explain Sprint's decision not to work with Huawei.
