Emily Deaton, CEO of JetAviva

Emily Deaton joined JetAviva in 2019 as vice president of sales and quickly ascended to CEO, a position she has held since 2022. The company, founded in 2006 by Ben Marcus and Cyrus Sigari, originally focused on helping piston and turboprop owners transition into jets. Today, JetAviva is a thriving business aviation consultancy and aircraft brokerage firm, with offices across the U.S. and more than 1,000 sales transactions to its name. The company continues to grow, recently expanding its team to include specialists in Gulfstream and Dassault business jets.

“What many don’t realize,” Deaton said, “is that nearly 30% of our business involves super-midsize and large-cabin aircraft. For a firm that completes around 100 transactions a year, that’s a significant number of high-value deals.”

Deaton holds a degree in public relations and began her career in business aviation at Embraer. Beyond her role at JetAviva, she serves as chairman of the board at Angel Flight West, an organization that provides critical medical transportation through a network of volunteer pilots. She also sits on the board of the International Aircraft Dealers Association’s Aircraft Exchange, which promotes transparency and ethical practices in the preowned aircraft market.

We spoke with Deaton about her inspirations, daily habits, and hands-on approach to leadership.

JetAviva

From the beginning, every sales director on our team has specialized and been highly focused on a specific set of makes and models. Relationships are at the core of everything we do. 

We take a different approach with our sales team—they often work together on deals and split commissions. That's a particular cultural dynamic that we have to manage and hire for. Because if you're a lone wolf kind of sales person, it’s not going to be your jam. 

The reason people buy or change aircraft is to make their lives more efficient, whether it’s saving time to spend more with family or accessing remote locations. At some point, you'll reach an inflection point where the losses start outweighing the gains. You may no longer be able to fit the number of passengers you need to carry, or you can't access the airports you need to reach. Perhaps your aircraft is simply too large for your needs. Businesses downsize or owners stop flying to certain destinations.

My advice is to never assume what aircraft is best for you without deeply considering your needs. There are several aircraft options that might support your mission, but some may represent better buying or selling opportunities depending on various factors. Take the Citation Mustang and Citation II, for example. Similar aircraft and from the same manufacturer, but they’re very different when it comes to market behavior. One has more fluidity in terms of buying and selling opportunities than the other. 

I hate to see people leave money on the table selling, or spend too much if they’re buying.

I can’t say it enough: Work with an accredited dealer who adheres to industry standards.It’s worth every investment in both time and money. A professional in the field will protect you and save you significant amounts throughout the process.

Leadership

The goal is to build systems that help people, not force people to adapt to the tools.

I spent a lot of time improving cross-departmental communication. Everyone was doing their tasks well, but it didn’t mean they were doing them efficiently or communicating effectively. This led to breakdowns, frustration, and unnecessary struggles.

I think it’s tempting to list 100 things you want to change and try to do them all at once, but that can break an organization. It’s overwhelming, and people can’t absorb that much change at once. It disrupts their day-to-day work. 

The key is learning the team and respecting the people there, and look for ways to improve communication. When you make a small change that improves people’s lives, they’re more open to future changes. If you make their lives easier, they’re on board.

Communication is a big deal for me. I still meet regularly, one-on-one, with most of the team. If you're a leader and you don’t have one-on-ones, you should. If you have them and don’t like them, change them. Don’t reschedule or under-prioritze them. These meetings are crucial.

Keep it under 30 minutes. The first few minutes should focus on results. Every job has something that contributes to the business’s success—so define it, measure it, and hold yourself accountable to it. The discussion should also be about progress—how you’re improving, whether it’s in your sales pipeline, transaction management, or any other area. At the end, I always ask: “What’s getting in your way? What isn’t going well, and how can I help?” This is the most important part, but it’s also the hardest to get right. It requires a strong relationship and trust for people to open up about the things that are holding them back.

Hiring is one of the hardest parts of my job. I need to bring on people who are not only highly skilled but who also have a proven track record in their area of expertise. I’m looking for people who ask the right questions, who engage with our culture enthusiastically, who bring solid experience to the table—and who connect well with the team.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “hire slow, fire fast.” I get the intent behind it, but it’s not that simple. People are complex, and situations often have more layers than that phrase gives credit for.

I want to be the kind of leader that somebody learns how to be a leader from, so they are a  good leader to somebody else down the road.

Volunteer work strengthens my leadership. Being a good leader makes me a better parent. Being a good parent makes me a better leader. These parts of my life support each other—they’re not in conflict.

Values

My dad had high expectations for performance. He pushed me in a loving way. His mindset was that if you’re going to do something, you’re going to do it well.

I learned a lot working with my mom. She has excellent project management skills. She’s great in an office environment, strong at interoffice communication, and very strategic in her thinking. I started with internships and answering phones at her real estate office when I was 14. During school breaks, she’d let me come in and help—usually filing papers back when everything was still on paper. There was this room full of filing cabinets, and I’d spend hours putting documents away. She said, “You can do this two ways—you can just file, or you can read what I'm handing you and learn something from it.”

I still do all of my own admin work. I probably won’t ever have an executive assistant because I actually enjoy getting into the weeds. To this day, when I pull a report for a sales call, I literally take the raw data, put it into a spreadsheet, and build my own chart. I like that tactile process. I want to touch it, feel it, know it. I don’t just want to see the information—I want to understand it deeply.

It’s not about me. It’s about helping other people succeed—so they can live the personal and professional lives they’re meant to have.

My responsibility and obligation is to enable the success of others. That could be the owner of the company or it could be the administrative assistant answering phones. Their success matters equally.

Early on in my career, I was hesitant to talk much about my kids or personal life. I worried that if people thought I was too busy with things at home, they’d assume I couldn’t do a good job at work. So I kept that part of my life separate. I worked really hard to prove, “Hey, I’m still a great employee,” even though I was struggling—dropping off and picking up my kid from daycare, just trying to keep it all together. It was hard.

Fast forward to when I was interviewing for the JetAviva job. By that point, I was remarried and had seven kids. And I remember thinking, “Oh my God, they cannot find out about this— there’s no way they’ll hire me!”

When I was in the interview with Cyrus, he said, “Hey, I heard you have a bunch of kids,” and I ended up telling him the whole story: I was remarried, we have seven kids, some of them are 10 years apart.

And then he said something that really stuck with me. He goes, “I wish I had known this about you sooner. Anyone who can navigate a blended family with that many kids, and everything you’ve been through to get to this point—you can absolutely manage my sales team.” And he offered me the job on the spot.

That was a turning point in my career, and I’ve embraced it ever since. I don’t hide the fact that I have a big family anymore, because I truly believe that if you want something done, ask a busy person. And I live by that. I also want to show others—especially people with kids, big families, competing priorities—that it’s totally okay. You can do both.

As an industry, we have an obligation to do a better job of celebrating the humanitarian work we’re doing. We need to talk about it more because our industry tends to come under scrutiny—and that scrutiny isn’t going away. It’s easy to look at the wealth people have and make assumptions about what that says about them. But look at the amount of good being done! Disaster relief, work with children, animals, donations—it's all happening. When you consider the time and money that go into these flights, it would blow people’s minds.

You’re blessed to be a blessing. If you have more resources, that simply means you have more to give. And I think many people in this industry are living that out very generously.

I don’t feel like the whole company is resting on my shoulders and that one wrong decision will cause everything to fall apart. That’s just not true. No one is that important. But I show up every day committed to giving my best. 

The foundation of everything is my faith. I believe I’ve been gifted with certain abilities, and I feel a responsibility to use them. That belief gives me energy and purpose every single day.

This interview has been edited and condensed.