Prior to joining AEA, he was Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of Nortel. Owens had served on their board of directors and took the helm of Nortel following the disclosure of accounting issues in April 2004. Under his leadership, Nortel was reestablished as a strong, stable, ethical Fortune 500 company growing strongly and on the path to leadership in the telecommunications and enterprise IT global marketplace.

Prior to joining Nortel, Owens was chief executive officer and chairman of Teledesic LLC and, before that, he was the president, chief operating officer and vice chairman of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the largest employee-owned high-technology company in the U.S. Prior to joining SAIC, Mr. Owens was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second-ranking military officer in the United States. He had responsibility for the reorganization and restructuring of the armed forces in the post-Cold War era.

From 1991 to 1993, Owens was the deputy chief of Naval Operations for Resources, Warfare Requirements and Assessments. He served as commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in 1990 and 1991 during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. Between 1988 and 1991, he served as senior military assistant to Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney, the senior military position in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Owens has served on the board of directors of 19 public companies and has founded two technology companies, Lumera and Extend America. He is on the board of Daimler Chrysler AG, Polycom, Wipro, Embarq and AEA Investors LP. Owens is a member of several philanthropic boards including the Carnegie Foundation, Brookings Institution and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He has a B.A. and M.S. in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University and an M.S. in management from George Washington University.