Principals and Endorsements

John J Hovis, Ph.D.

John J Hovis is an accomplished senior business executive with a diverse strategic business development, strategic marketing, corporate finance, and operational background. 

Hovis has held a number of senior executive management and C-level leadership experiences (Interim CEO, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Investor Relations Officer) spanning a broad cross section of industries: public safety, technology, distribution, chemicals, oil and gas, equipment manufacturing, software development, and management consulting services. 

His multiple leadership roles span a 25-year business career and include business operations, corporate strategy, strategic business development, strategic marketing and sales, strategic finance, M&A, and capital acquisition. His skill set is particularly focused on the strategic and organizational development required to enter new markets via new business developments, innovating products and services, and leading strategic account development efforts. Hovis has a solid track record of designing and achieving strategic outcomes and managing tactical execution.

Operationally, these roles have involved responsibility for rightsizing of enterprise and business unit operations and process reengineering efforts to deliver expected operational efficiencies to regain profitability performance objectives. Additionally, Hovis has provided oversight of marketing operations, sales force effectiveness training, and customer relationship management systems development. 

Hovis holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics from University of Wyoming. In addition to the application of managerial economics, strategy, and corporate finance, Hovis is a subject matter expert in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics (with a focus on welfare economics), Regulatory Economics, and Econometrics (applied statistics for economic research). He also has a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Political Economics. 

Hovis possesses strong interpersonal relationship skills; strong writing and oral presentation capabilities; he is an accomplished facilitator, lecturer and academician. He began his career as an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park and later served as adjunct faculty in the W.P. Carey School of Business, Management Department Executive MBA Program at the Arizona State University.


Management Endorsements

Roy Vallee, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Board of Directors, retired Chairman and CEO of Avnet, Inc.

John Hovis drove many vital contributions to the development of strategy at Avnet, through his personal strategic   thinking skills as well as leading the transformation of our planning and management process. He is a team player who made our company better through his personal contributions, while also helping our executives improve as individuals. 

Specifically, he helped me as CEO develop a better understanding and appreciation for the importance of ROIC, in addition to revenue and earnings growth. John possesses remarkable talents and experience, his personal ethics are beyond reproach and his work ethic is second to none.”


Eric S. Witt, Operations Executive, TPG Capital.                                                                                                                        Former Senior Vice President of Strategy & Business Development, Nexeo Solutions

  • Outstanding job developing new strategy and market intelligence frameworks (from scratch) for use with a broad base of senior and mid-level leaders.
  • Quick study – proven ability to dig into new market and product segments and to quickly move up the learning curve.
  • Disciplined and process-oriented – has the experience to not only design new processes, but the comfort and confidence to see those executed.
  • Engaging style with demonstrated ease in communicating to both large groups and in smaller, less formal settings.
  • Excellent mentor for junior resources and high-quality team member with focus on team development.


Deborah Mackiewicz, President, Athena Management Resources

  • Working with John on a front end transformation for a medium sized oil and gas service provider was a memorable and distinct pleasure. His ability to see the big picture, comb through reams of information and discern strategic gaps and opportunities was impressive.
  • Equally impressive is his ability to form and lead a highly capable team of professionals in a way that brought out the best of each one’s capability. John’s humble and servant leadership style is unique, inspiring and effective with high performing individuals in the change management arena.
  • John’s intellect, insight and leadership delivers exceptional results. His front end transformation strategy effectively prepared and propelled the oil and gas service provider to capture the industry recovery opportunity and double their backlog while competitors were struggling or going bankrupt.


Stanton Sipes, Executive Vice President, Director of Business Development, Veyo Logistics. Former CEO, GoalCentrix, Inc.

  • When John joined our organization as COO it was transformational in nearly every way. His ability to operate and manage the organization gave me the ability and confidence to do what I needed to as CEO ( raise capital, drive our sales efforts and interface with our BOD and other investors). He was able to help develop and align the organization around our strategic plan, and manage our software development, operations, and marketing resources well. Financially, his guidance helped our company go farther and remain viable longer than without his leadership! This was a great value add to me as we developed our value proposition and grew our customer base over time. 
  • While not a software developer when he joined, he overcame all technical deficiencies very quickly and demonstrated to our team that he could definitely hold his own technically – which  led to him building confidence within our team. 
  • John approached his role with a refreshing level of transparency. He exercised high expectations of himself and with our team and helped all of us excel. He accepts nothing less than the best out of the team he leads. He is a team player, operates with high integrity, and is highly loyal.


Paul Washeba, CEO, Urban Environmental Resources (UER)

John takes great pride in understanding the needs of the people he works for and with, in order to define the best solution for their needs. His understanding of business (across a vast arena) is second to none. His ability to quickly learn, analyze, and execute a plan for business development is a value add for anyone that John works with.

John has played an instrumental part in building a new strategic plan for my company, UER. This has including  facilitation of strategic planning sessions with the senior team as well as an in-depth market analysis of the space that UER operates in. Most recently … providing guidance on a variety of go-to-market strategies as UER continues to evolve in the social media networking arena.” 


Rod Larson, President and CEO, Oceaneering, Inc.

  • John Hovis was a great contributor to the strategy process at Oceaneering.  He developed a Hoshin Kanri matrix that was used to align strategy across several disparate businesses.  He also created and implemented a process for tracking progress.
  • The formal strategy process was new for the company and John worked tirelessly to teach the business leaders how to define their strategy and use the tools to track and communicate their progress.  
  • He was teacher, champion and most importantly, a trusted ally to me in introducing this critical element to our organization.  I enjoyed working with John and found him brilliant in the material and extraordinary in his dedication to our success.