Navy Man Turned Business Executive

Lowell McAdam was born in 1954 and earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Cornell University. He went on to earn his MBA degree from the University of San Diego.  McAdam first worked for the government spending six years in the U.S. Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps.  He is also a licensed professional engineer.

He’s future lay with the private sector though. In 1983 McAdam joined Pacific Bell and stayed with the company until 1993. He held a number of executive positions in the company including vice president of Bay Area marketing.  McAdam then joined AirTouch in an executive position and was lead technical partner for cellular ventures in European and Asian countries.

He became the president and CEO of another company, PrimeCo Personal Communications before joining Verizon Wireless when it began in 2000. He built the company into the industry’s leading wireless provider and the largest wireless voice and 3G broadband data network.  For his work he eventually became the president and CEO of Verizon Wireless in 2007 until he became the CEO of Verizon.

McAdam became president and COO in October 2010. He was promoted to CEO on August 2011 and chairman on January 2012.

The former navy man leads a huge company. Verizon deals with customers in more than 150 countries as well as all of the Fortune 500. In the U.S. it has 98 million retail customers and had revenues of almost $116 billion in 2012.