Our Corporate Bios
John L. Verna MBA, CBA, CPA, CFE
CEO & Executive Director
Navigator Associates
Mr. Verna is a highly accomplished business investigations and intelligence industry executive with over 35 years of client, technical and leadership experience.
Since 2006, John has been the CEO and Executive Director of Navigator Associates, a firm specializing in providing strategic development, M&A, investigations, controls and monitoring services to Fortune 1000 corporations as well as a Partner with Global Audit LLC, a special purpose forensic auditing firm concentrating on international issues.
John has worked with many clients to manage both domestic and international investigative crises, evaluate breakdowns in internal controls as well as resolving related business disputes. He has worked in partnership with Accume Partners, an internal auditing services firm, as well as several other professional services firms to prototype development of investigative, controls and monitoring practices.
From 2001 until 2005, John was a senior executive with Global Intelligence, an investigative and controls monitoring firm, which was acquired by Incepta/Citigate PLC in 2002. As Executive Managing Director of Citigate Global Intelligence and Chairman of the governing Executive Group, he led the Firm’s Investigative & Intelligence Practices. In his most significant publicly disclosed engagement, John’s Business Controls Consulting Practice was teamed with Giuliani Partners as the Independent Monitor of controls over the manufacturing of Purdue Pharma’s highly controversial narcotic, OxyContin.
At Kroll Associates from 1992 through 2001, John was a Senior Managing Director where he held a number of executive positions. He was a leader in the Firm’s Forensic Financial Investigations Group as well as the Corporate Investigations Practice. He founded and led the Total Business Controls Consulting Practice, an extension and enhancement of the Firm’s renowned global investigative business. From 1996 until 1998, John was Kroll’s Chief Strategic Development Officer, creating the Firm’s long term growth plan which took it to almost $1b in revenues by 2007 as well as positioning and executing a number of acquisitions.
While at Kroll, John led many of the Firm’s largest and most complex engagements which included independent confidential inquiries into allegations of serious, non-routine business controls breakdowns, corporate investigations, financial reporting misstatements, fraud, theft, Foreign Corruption Practices Act issues, gray market inquiries, economic espionage, and other types of material business irregularities. He pioneered the concept of combining investigative services with business controls consulting, utilizing this methodology in such diverse engagements as the Bankruptcy of Orange County California, the Purdue Pharma OxyContin controversy as well as numerous confidential engagements for Fortune 1000 and other organizations. John was a Deputy Federal Monitor for the U.S. Department of Justice’s mandated Monitoring of the Los Angeles Police Department where he was responsible for oversight of the Department’s Internal Auditing and Inspector General Groups.
Before joining Kroll in 1992, John was a Senior Manager with the Financial Advisory Services consulting division of PriceWaterhouseCoopers (then Coopers & Lybrand), where he had responsibility for the start-up and operation of the Atlantic Region M&A Divestiture Consulting Practice. He was also a Senior Managing Consultant with the Firm’s Strategic Management Services Group, engaged in business turnaround and organizational strategy development.
Prior to his Firm sponsored graduate school work, John had been a Manager with PriceWaterhouseCoopers in both the Computer and Financial Auditing Groups as well as working in the Firm’s Business Investigations (& Bankruptcy) Practice.
John was an adjunct professor at Widener University’s Graduate School of Business, where he lectured on litigation consulting and M&A strategy.
John is one of the founders and a former member of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Internal Controls.
In 2013, John, along with several colleagues, founded the Center for Strategic Business Integrity, a research and certification organization dedicated to developing independent, effective corporate directorship oversight skills.
John holds an M.B.A. in Business Strategy and Entrepreneurship from Cornell University and a B.Sc. in Management from Rider University. He is a Certified Internal Controls Auditor, a Certified Fraud Examiner, a Certified Board Advisor and a Certified Public Accountant, licensed in the State of Pennsylvania. John is a Certified member of the International Association of Independent Corporate Monitors.