Raymond J. Leopold

Dr. Raymond J. Leopold (Born in Chicago, Illinois) is one of the three engineers who in late 1987 conceived of and later designed the Iridium satellite constellation, the first realization of global, wireless, personal communications.

Leopold joined Motorola in 1987 after having spent a career in the U.S. Air Force where he held a variety of technical and technical management positions. He directed the development of communications systems at the Electronics Systems Division in Massachusetts. He served two tours in the Pentagon, one in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and one on the Air Staff. He taught for over five years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, and worked in research and development for four years at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in Albuquerque. He was also an Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at George Washington University, and he had been a Senior Lecturer at MIT and had chaired the Industry Advisory Board for the Aero/Astro Department. He has also lectured at Stanford University.

Leopold earned three degrees in electrical engineering, a bachelor's degree from the United States Air Force Academy in 1967, a master's degree from North Carolina State University in 1968, and a Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1973. He was also honored with a Doctor of Telecommunications Management Degree from South Dakota of Mines and Technology in 1997. He has completed Executive Education courses at the Harvard Business School, MIT (Sloan), The University of California (Berkeley), The Center for Creative Leadership, and The Defense Systems Management College.

The Iridium system integrates a packet-switched architecture within its globally deployed constellation of satellites together with the circuit-switched architecture of the public-switched telephone network. It was created by Leopold and Bary Bertiger and Ken Peterson.

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