Joe F. Edwards is Executive Advisor, Strategy at XCMR and the founder and CEO of Polaris Technology Solutions, a company providing program management and engineering services for the Federal Government. He is an entrepreneur who has held positions as a CEO and Chairman of the Board as well as general managerial positions in Fortune 10 companies. As a general manager and sales executive, he has sold over $6 billion of business to Federal, State and Local clients for Polaris and as a senior executive in firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Accenture.
In addition to XCMR, Joe is involved in development of advanced technology for systems such as hypersonic vehicles, optionally manned aircraft and nuclear rocket engine powered spacecraft.
Joe is also a former fighter pilot, test pilot and astronaut. He holds the unofficial low altitude speed record for manned aircraft – 1076 mph at sea level attained in a Navy F-14 Tomcat – the airplane in which he flew combat missions in Lebanon and Libya during the Cold War, and from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf during Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
In 1991 during Operation Desert Storm, Joe recovered a damaged F-14 aboard his ship with an open cockpit, broken bones, and collapsed lung while blind in one eye – for which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross by the President of the United States.
In NASA’s Space Shuttle – Mir Space Station program, he set world records for piloting the largest mass in earth orbit, for flying the most humans in space simultaneously and for conducting the closest flying maneuvers around an orbiting space station in the history of space flight. Joe held several leadership positions at the space agency, managed the operations and development of the International Space Station from Star City, Russia, served as CAPCOM in Johnson Space Center’s Mission Control and managed space shuttle and International Space Station safety for the astronaut office.
He is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, the US Naval Test Pilot School and the Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun). Joe holds a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering, and Master’s degrees in Flight Control Systems Engineering, Engineering Flight Test and Industrial Management. Joe flew several hundred hours in space, logged 650 aircraft carrier arrested landings and flown over 8000 hours in 95 different aircraft.
