Industry veteran Tom Hunter rejoins Javad GNSS, strengthens J-CORE team

Tom Hunter, Javad GNSS

Javad GNSS announces that, after a short retirement, Tom Hunter has rejoined the company as chief sales officer. Hunter will draw on more than three decades of GNSS industry experience, most recently with Javad GNSS and previously with Ashtech/Magellan as vice president.

“Tom is key to our operations,” said Nedda Ashjaee, CEO. “I am looking forward to reigniting this group of companies and continuing our four-decade tradition of bold innovation. Who better to do this with than the person who helped my father build the original company in the first place?”

Hunter will oversee sales channel development in support of a new market-driven roadmap developed by the executive team at Javad GNSS, also known as J-CORE.

Hunter’s association with Javad began in 1987 as one of the original seven people at Ashtech, Ashjaee’s namesake firm created shortly after his departure from Trimble Navigation. The firm brought numerous surveying industry firsts and other legendary products to market.

Company founder Javad Ashjaee passed unexpectedly in May 2020, leaving behind 200 loyal employees in offices around the globe. A strategic thinker, Ashjaee was known for operating “several steps ahead,” said one employee, having groomed his executive office and other support staff for a swift takeover in the event he were unavailable. Javad’s daughter Nedda, familiar to all who had conducted business with the firm, has spent the last 12 months carefully restructuring the business plan.

On March 31, Nedda Ashjaee, Tom Hunter and the rest of the J-CORE team hosted a two-day virtual gathering of global Javad GNSS dealers, technicians and other personnel, taking time to unveil the firm’s new strategic vision. The information and overall strategy was met with an overwhelmingly positive response.

Javad GNSS retains significant patent holdings relating to survey and mapping and offers what many of its customers believe to be one-of-a-kind system(s).

Hunter explained, “If you’re a surveyor or other positioning professional working with GNSS, you owe a debt of gratitude to Javad — the man dedicated his life to developing GNSS for the high-precision marketplace. You can see his hand in nearly every major GNSS survey system on the market today.”

“As we continue to develop and introduce new products in support of the surveying and reference station markets, we will use our exceptional technology and our U.S.-based world-class manufacturing facility to focus on new OEM applications and opportunities including strategic partnerships and private labeling,” Hunter said.