About The Navitas Group
Founded in 2010, The Navitas Group, LLC is an executive advisory firm specializing in facilities infrastructure, energy management, and capital decision support. We serve owners, executives, and operators in hospitality, healthcare, and commercial real estate — organizations where facilities decisions carry significant financial and operational consequences.
We are seasoned operators, not theorists. Every recommendation we make is shaped by decades spent on the owner's side of multimillion-dollar capital programs, energy portfolios, and mission-critical operations. We have sat in the room where these decisions get made — and we know what it takes to get them right.
Our role is to navigate the complexity of the built environment on your behalf. As trusted advisors and owners' representatives, we work exclusively for you — with no equipment to sell, no vendor relationships to protect, and no agenda beyond your success. When the stakes are high and the decisions are unfamiliar, we are the resource you turn to before you commit capital, sign a contract, or change direction.
We’ll handle individual projects, but our model is built on long-term relationships, not one-off transactions. Over time, we become embedded in how you think about your facilities, your infrastructure, and your long-term capital plans — a senior partner you rely on to ask the right questions, see around corners, and bring clarity to decisions that will shape your organization for years to come.
About John J. Lembo, CFM, LEED AP
Founder & Managing Principal
John J. Lembo brings nearly four decades of experience in facilities management, energy strategy, engineering and project management and professional services. His career spans organizations from startups to Fortune 500 firms, with senior roles that have shaped how some of the world's most recognized brands manage their physical infrastructure.
As Senior Director of Energy & Sustainability at Starwood Hotels & Resorts, John oversaw energy programs across more than 200 full service hotels in North America, and managed a $1 billion outsourcing agreement, eventually taking it back in house, subsequently earning the ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year recognition in both 2001 and 2002.
As Vice President of Facilities at RiverSpring Living, he led a mission-critical healthcare campus through the dark days of Covid — maintaining uninterrupted care operations while transforming the physical environment.
John has also served as Global Head of Facilities at WeWork, and Principal and Regional Vice President at TRC Companies — bringing executive-level leadership to each engagement. As an independent consultant he performed facility assessments and energy audits for full service hotels across the US and was engaged to develop the facilities and sustainability strategy for Highgate Hotels.
He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from Pratt Institute and is a:
Certified Facility Manager (CFM)
LEED Accredited Professional (LEED AP)
Certified Energy Auditor (CEA)
Certified Six Sigma Greenbelt
John has been an Adjunct Professor at Manhattan University’s Graduate School of Civil Engineering and a Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute School of Architecture. He is the author of So You Want to Be a Consultant: Hard Truths, Real Tools and the No-BS Road to Consulting Success (2026), and is currently at work on his second book, In Layman's Terms: The Complicated Business of Making Life Simple
He founded The Navitas Group to offer the kind of independent, owner-side advisory that he spent his career wishing more clients had access to.
