Mr. John Maher

Chief of Staff City of Portsmouth
4536 Winston Road
Portsmouth, VA 23703
Tel: 757-672-1359 Fax: 757-393-5241
Email: john.maher@cox.net

John Maher is Portsmouth’s first Chief Executive officer and the newest member of the Executive Management Team recruited by City Manager Jim Oliver. In this role, John helps manage the efforts of 2,200 employees, 22 City departments and a $498 million annual budget. Working as a team, he has achieved a 2-year strategic reorganization for the city by overseeing 17 City Council high priority items and 47 Vision Projects.

Prior to this position, John was the president and senior consultant for 2020 Vision International. For the last two years he served as a Senior Air Force Strategic Weapon Requirements Planning & Projects Manager and Consultant at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. In that capacity, he coordinated strategic weapon requirements and allocations with the senior officers and executives within the Air Force’s major commands - Air Combat Command, Air Armament Center, Air Force Acquisitions Command, Air Force Material Command, Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, NORAD and Air Force Test Command. In that roll, he has helped expedite the development of near and long-term strategic weapon roadmap recommendations out to 2025. Using his prior Navy connections, he began building joint Navy integration and transformation options in both air-to-air and air-to-ground weapon capability areas and was twice selected as Air Force Weapons Requirement Division Contractor of the Quarter nominee.

His prior life experience and education prepared him to undertake executive leadership roles that encompass transforming dynamic visions into reality for organizations aspiring to achieve industry standards of excellence. His MBA and Ph.D. studies focused in areas of strategic planning and marketing, e-commerce, total quality management, predictive modeling and organizational performance measures. Prior to launching 2020 Vision International, he spent six years at Regent University using these proven strategic planning and performance concepts. As their strategic planning, marketing and institutional research director, he worked with the board of directors and president to develop and execute a ten year strategy that resulted in doubling the campus enrollment, expanding the campus facilities to four major international and national cities and made distance learning an integral part of the graduate education curriculum. He helped position the institution's image from regional to global and led a high performance team that ensured the reaccreditation process received zero recommendations from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). Part of this global expansion included transformational development and implementation of four innovative and profitable worldwide Ph.D. and Master Degree programs via the Internet. Additionally, he played a critical role recommending cost effective 21st century information technologies that updated the institution's global campus facilities and student enrollment management services.

As an adjunct faculty member of Regent University's school of government and business, he performed consulting projects for over 300 organizations using graduate students as organizational consultants. This work encompassed government, business and educational institutions. He continued to perform a similar service for working professionals enrolled in Old Dominion University's continuing education center.

Prior to his work at Regent University, John Maher served twenty years in Naval fighter aviation flying F-14's and the TOPGUN A-4's. Even before his two tours as officer in charge of the NAS Norfolk Beech Kingair and the NAS Oceana Fighter Squadron Twelve Aggressor commands, his military leadership and management philosophy had emphasized results oriented planning, high performance productivity, human resource management and a return on investment. These were and remain his bottom line mission when he joins an organization. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Math and Computers from the US Naval Academy, an MBA from Regent University and completed his Ph.D. up through the dissertation process at Old Dominion University.