profilesinsuccess | Ed’s wife, Marilynn, was beside him every step of the way through the BTG journey. In fact, several years before they married, she left CTEC and became Ed’s first employee at BTG. “She’s my moral compass,” he says. “Through all the ups and downs, she’s always kept me on the straight and narrow, and is an exceptional judge of character. She’s got this sense about her, and she keeps me grounded.” Ed is also grounded by his remarkable daughters—one a research physician and professor at Harvard Medical School, and the other a practicing physician in DC who successfully treated one of the anthrax patients. “As proud as my parents were of me when I showed them my speech at the White House, I’m equally proud of my daughters,” says Ed.
Ok I'll weigh in. The question for me isn't whether it's okay to express schadenfreude wrt Walensky. It's how can we pressure her, as executor of a family trust whose $ comes from her father's role in Titan Corporation, to pay reparations to Titan's torture victims in Abu Ghraib
— Justin Feldman (@jfeldman_epi) October 23, 2022
Ed’s engagement in the business community has remained strong in the wake of selling BTG. In 2006, he joined with a team of investors to form a Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation, raising $126 million in the public market to purchase a civilian government contractor called ATS Corporation. Ed served as CEO of ATS, leading it to flourish until it was sold in 2010 to Salient Technologies, Inc.
Ed then shifted his focus full-time to his participation in nonprofit and for-profit boards—commitments he has prioritized since 1984. Using his “Seven P’s” as guiding beacons, he has served as a Board member, Advisor, or Committee member of over fifty organizations, including Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology, the Northern Virginia Technology Council, the Technology Work Group of the Virginia Economic Recovery Commission, and Holy Cross Hospital.
Education, as well, has remained a passion for Ed, and although full-time academic teaching never became the focal point of his career, he taught mathematics at NYU and Kingsborough Community College. During his tenure at NASA, he taught similar courses at Boston University and Northeastern University. Later on, he continued to teach at American University, the University of Maryland, and George Mason University. He served as President of the Board of Directors of the Northern Virginia Community College Educational Foundation, as well as on the Board of Trustees at Virginia Commonwealth University. One of his greatest honors came when he was asked to serve on the Board of Trustees at New York University, his Alma Mater, and more recently, he was invited by Governor Terry McAuliffe to serve on the Board of the Virginia 529 Program. “It’s a lot of fun,” he says. “We have to think about how you finance a college education, and what the return on capital for that education will look like in 20 years.”
In advising young people entering the working world today, Ed underscores the importance of commitment as a foundation for laying out the Seven P’s. “Nothing is easy,” he says. “Don’t flounder. Figure out what you want to do and then go do it. And when you face setbacks, remember you have two choices. You can go back to bed and hide, or you can go to work and put on a brave face. Those moments will be your waypoints, and I hope you choose to do what you have to do, rather than what you might want to do in that moment.”
Beyond that, Ed has found that the Seven P’s tend to lead people to that ideal ground where altruism and self-interest intersect. “Self-interest is fine, but never at the expense of others,” he says. “Altruism is wonderful, but you can’t have a mission without money. I think the real value set is all about pursuing something of importance, but in a business-like way so you ensure you have the resources to actually accomplish it.”
From his days delivering papers and playing street ball in Manhattan, to his introduction of President Bill Clinton at the White House, to his legacy of leadership throughout the DC business community, Ed’s astounding accomplishments are the projection of the mission sense that has always guided him—a pixel-precise vision he hopes the entire country will reclaim with time. “When I graduated from college and started work at NASA, every single person in that organization—and across the U.S.—was aligned and motivated in our goal to make it to the moon,” he reflects. “Now, I attribute our national sense of malaise to the fact that we’ve lost our mission sense as a country. Everyone needs that object called mission—the new moon that inspires them to write their future, and then go out and live it.”
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