Trent H. Edwards
Trent is the President and CEO of T.H. Edwards Consulting LLC; he specializes in helping companies at all stages of development, align their business capabilities to Department of Defense strategic priorities and future operational needs. He is passionate about building positive, successful leaders, teams, and organizations. He is a motivational speaker on topics of leadership, human capital development, unconscious bias, and organizational culture. He consults with the U.S. Air Force and U.S. companies on diversity, equity, and inclusion. He is a Venture Partner with The Veteran Fund, working with founders, partners, investors, and mentors to build the veteran startup ecosystem.
Trent served as the Director of MGMWERX, a collaboration and innovation hub in Montgomery, Alabama, that augments Air University, part of the Air Force Air Education and Training Command and supports the Air Force Research Laboratory and DEFENSEWERX missions. He facilitated the transfer of knowledge, concepts, ideas, technology and innovation between the public sector, private sector and academia, and the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force.
He is appointed by the Governor of Alabama to serve on the Alabama Job Creation and Military Stability Commission. He is a volunteer Board Member for Navy Federal Credit Union, and a member of the Tiger Woods Foundation scholar/mentor program.
Prior to his appointment at MGMWERX, Trent was the Senior Vice President for Military and Community Development at the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce. He was responsible for developing public-private partnerships between the military and local communities to enhance economic, business, workforce development and job opportunities across the River Region Area that help maintain a strong military-mission presence. He collaborated with US Congressional staff members to secure $22 million in FY21 funding and $8 million in FY22 funding for local Air Force organizations in Montgomery, Alabama.
A retired United States Air Force Brigadier General, Trent served in enterprise-wide and regional Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Chief Operating Officer (COO) positions. His final Air Force assignment was the Air Force CFO for an $80 billion budget portfolio that funded daily operating expenses, military, and civilian payroll, facilities, infrastructure, and working capital for a 325,000-person workforce at 79 locations worldwide. He identified threats and vulnerabilities to the Air Force budget and developed budget cash-flow countermeasures that mitigated a $3.6 billion shortfall to keep the Air Force solvent. He led root-cause analysis efforts that revamped the Air Force military personnel cost model that reaped $450 million in savings and coordinated strategies to manage prices, upper and lower cash limits, cash-on-hand and profit and loss within the $23 billion Air Force Working Capital Fund. He served as CFO and lead programmer for U.S. Air Force Space Command, planning, programming, and aligning its $10 billion budget with future U.S. Space Force strategies.
Trent has extensive U.S. Congressional experience and served as the Chief of Congressional Affairs for the Air Force. As a Congressional Fellow to a U.S. Congressman, his portfolio included trade, economic development, and aid policies between the United States and African countries, and he penned legislation supporting a new trade-aid concept for the U.S. Trent’s Latin American experience includes consultation to the Colombian Air Force, providing expertise on enlisted military workforce professional development. In Guatemala, he implemented the first-ever regional military education summit, co-sponsored by his organization and the Guatemalan Air Force comprising seven other Latin countries. In Afghanistan, he negotiated a historic $182 million pay raise for Afghan National Security Forces and implemented initiatives that enhanced Afghan military recruitment and retention.
He commanded and led large Air Force organizations with responsibility for operations, infrastructure and services for 42,000 people.
He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing from North Carolina A&T State University and holds two Masters of Science degrees: in Human Relations from the University of Oklahoma and in National Security Studies from The Air University.
He has completed coursework at Georgetown University, The Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, and The John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
