Intelsat hires former Raytheon tech services leader as CEO

Intelsat has hired a new chief executive in Dave Wajsgras, a two-decade commercial and defense industry veteran who formerly led the Raytheon technology services business.

Wajsgras will join the satellite and telecommunications services provider on April 4, Intelsat said Monday. Current CEO Stephen Spengler will retire on that date after 18 years with the company, including as chief executive for approximately seven years.

Spengler announced his plans to retire in October, when Intelsat said that transition in leadership would happen upon the completion of a restructuring under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy process.

The company first started the process with a filing for Chapter 11 protection in May 2020 and completed the restructuring early this year.

Intelsat is no longer a publicly-traded company as a result, now being a privately-held entity with its former bondholders holding the equity.

Wajsgras spent 14 years at Raytheon with the first nine as chief financial officer and the latter five as president of the Intelligence, Information and Services segment that housed much of the company’s technology and systems integration work.

IIS disrupted and transformed itself by implementing business models and practices more often seen in commercial markets, but that process was by design as Wajsgras explained in an October 2019 episode of our Project 38 podcast.

Raytheon merged with United Technologies Corp. in April 2020. Since then, Wajsgras has been a partner at middle-market private equity firm Pine Island Capital Partners.

He is also on the boards of directors for Parsons Corp., Altamira Technologies, Martin Marietta Materials and Dreamscape Immersive.