Leadership Team
Our executive leadership team is comprised of individuals with an entrepreneurial flair and a successful background in the telecommunications industry and investment communities.
Peter Legault
Chief Executive Officer & President
A Co-Founder and principal shareholder of Navigata Communications 2009, Inc., Peter Legault is Chief Executive Officer and President of the company. Peter brings to this role 30 years of experience in the Canadian investment community and an extensive background in developing emerging telecom companies in Canada.
Peter's long career as an investment banker includes tenures at both bulge bracket investment banking houses and Canadian Independently owned and operated firms. Prior to his role in investment banking, Peter also served in the role as an investment analyst, and has extensive experience in serving on company boards and in mergers and acquisitions.
Peter has also been involved in a number of high-profile developments in the Canadian Communications Industry. He was a Founder of First Choice Canadian Communications Corp., Canada¹s first National pay television provider (later sold to Astral Communications). He was a Founder of Canbras Communications, a cable television provider in Brazil (later sold to Bell Canada International). Peter was also an integral part in the start up of GST Telecommunications, Inc., a Canadian company competing in the CLEC business in the United States.
Peter is a graduate of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and has an MBA from the University of Toronto.
top John Warta
Board Chairman
A Co-founder and principal shareholder of Navigata Communications 2009, Inc., John Warta is the Chairman of Navigata. John brings to this role a wealth of executive leadership experience in the telecommunications industry in Canada and the United States.
John has an impressive legacy of founding, developing and managing a number of telecommunications companies across Canada and the United States. His entrepreneurial activities in telecom started with Pacwest Network, where, as a Consultant/Venture Partner, he developed fiber optic networks with a number of Electric & Gas Utilities.
The emergence of competitive local competition led to John's establishment of a number of Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLEC) ventures. At Electric Lightwave (sold to Integra Telecom) he negotiated and opened monopoly markets in Oregon and Washington. At GST Telecommunications (a CLEC and Internet Service Provider), John developed the company from start-up stage, acquiring 13 companies, raising $1.4 billion in equity & debt and growing revenue to $350 million before it was sold to Time Warner Telecom. John's other entrepreneurial ventures also included Bestel, (a 5,000-mile long-haul fiber network based in Mexico), Velocita- P.F. Net (a long haul fiber optic network developer and carrier; now part of AT&T), and Pacific LightNet (a Hawaii-based integrated service provider & CLEC), where he completed a turn-around of a money-losing operation within six months.
John's long career in telecom began over 30 years ago at Pacific Telecom, a local exchange and long distance company, in the MIS department as a Systems Development Manager. Over the next seven years, John held a number of progressive positions as Vice President, Administration and Chief Operating Officer.
John is actively involved in the investment community as Founder and Principal Investor in NextNet Investments and has also owned and developed multiple residential and commercial real estate projects in Oregon and Washington State.
With more than thirty years experience in founding and managing telecom companies to achieve market success, John has the industry knowledge and relationships required to position Navigata for market success as a leading telecommunications service provider in Canada.
top Jeffrey Mayhook
President, Navigata USA
A Co-Founder of Navigata Communications 2009, Inc., Jeffrey Mayhook serves as President of Navigata USA, the Company’s US affiliate, as well as maintains his affiliation with Mayhook Law, PLLC, which engages primarily in the practice of telecommunications law, corporate governance, business transactions, and mergers and acquisition.
Jeffrey's telecom practice focus includes developing deal structures for public and private telecommunications providers contemplating "triple-play" services, public-private partnerships, fiber-to-the-home networks, WiMAX, and the sale or acquisition of under-utilized fiber networks. He has also recently guided and worked with select telecommunications clients applying for grant and loan funding under the broadband portion of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, and serves as a board member of the California Broadband Cooperative, a middle-mile transport network currently under development in the Eastern Sierra region.
Prior to co-founding Mayhook Law in September, 2001, Jeffrey served as Secretary and Vice President, Chief Corporate Counsel, of PreNet Corporation (now PreCash), a Portland-based startup in the electronic payment transaction industry, where, as part of the senior management team, he directed the company's legal affairs in the areas of venture financing, corporate governance, intellectual property, and securing major agreements with wireless carriers, national retailers, and payment processors.
From 1996 to 2000, Jeffrey served as Vice President, Legal and Regulatory Affairs, and then as Secretary and Corporate Counsel, at GST Telecommunications, Inc., a publicly-traded competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), where he was directly involved in the regulatory and transactional issues relating to the rollout of virtually every area of competitive telecommunications. Moreover, given his role as a member of the senior management team, Jeffrey's responsibilities extended to formulating and implementing GST's strategic initiatives, as well as to managing and directing GST's extensive internal and external legal services.
A graduate of the University of Iowa College of Law, Jeffrey also spent 14 years engaged in private law practice in Anchorage, Alaska, where he focused primarily on corporations, public utilities, and litigation and appellate matters. Additionally, he holds an M.A. in English from the State University of New York at New Paltz, and a B.A. in Business Administration and English from the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse. Jeffrey is currently a member of the Federal Communications Bar Association and Energy Bar Association, the leading bar associations for, respectively, communications and energy lawyers dedicated to the development, interpretation, and practice of communications and energy law and policy.
Jeffrey currently serves on the Energy Bar Association's Competition and Antitrust Committee.
Bar Memberships
- Alaska, 1982
- United States Supreme Court, 1993
- Washington, 2000
top J. Owen Gilbert
Chief Operating Officer
J. Owen Gilbert is the Chief Operating Officer. In this role, Owen plays an integral role in developing and executing the Company’s strategic growth initiatives, as well as overseeing its entire operations.
During his tenure at Navigata, Owen has held a number of positions of increasing responsibility. In his previous position as Senior Vice President of Sales Marketing & Customer Service, Owen was responsible for leading all activities related to customer
acquisition and service at Navigata. He was accountable for setting
strategic sales and marketing goals, and for the delivery of superior customer experience.
Owen joined Navigata in May of 1999 as the Manager, Switch Engineering. In the past eleven years, he has held progressive positions in the company, primarily focused on the customer relationship side of the business. Prior to this, Owen held a position as a Manager Network Strategy at ACC. In his six years there, he held management positions in customer service, technology and development, as well as in network planning.
With more than eighteen years of telecommunications experience, including Carrier Sales, Customer Service, Network Planning and technology consulting, Owen has the knowledge and experience required to lead our sales, marketing and customer service teams to market success.
top Kevin Erickson, P Eng.
Vice President, Engineering & Network Optimization
Kevin Erickson is the Vice President, Engineering & Network Optimization at Navigata. In this role he is responsible for leadership of Navigata's skilled and experienced Engineering team, and provides vision and strategy for all network architecture and infrastructure activities.
Previous to his promotion to Vice President of Engineering & Network at Navigata, Kevin held the position of Director, Technical Solutions & Network Optimization with Navigata Communications. In this position, Kevin managed all aspects of Navigata's technical solutions group and network optimization.
Kevin joined Navigata in June of 2001 as a Customer Solutions Engineer. In the past nine years, he has held progressive positions in the company, primarily focused on the network optimization and expansion of the regional and national networks. Prior to joining Navigata, Kevin held the position of Optical Sales Engineer at Cisco Systems and Manager of Engineering at Westel Communications Ltd. With more than twenty-five years of telecommunications experience in Network Engineering and Customer Solutions consulting, Kevin has the knowledge and experience to lead Navigata's engineering team required to position Navigata as a leading telecommunications services provider in Canada.
Kevin holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from Lakehead University, and is a Professional Engineer with the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of BC.
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