Afterburner Names Tropic Ocean Airways Founder Rob Ceravolo as CEO

What happened

Afterburner has appointed Rob "Rocko" Ceravolo, founder of Tropic Ocean Airways, as its chief executive officer, effective August 24, 2026. The appointment coincides with the company's 30th anniversary.

Ceravolo is a former U.S. Navy fighter aviator and TOPGUN graduate who served 14 years in the Navy, flying the F-14D, F/A-18E and F-5N in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. He founded Fort Lauderdale-based Tropic Ocean Airways in 2009 with one aircraft and one employee, building it into what Afterburner describes as the world's largest amphibious airline. The airline earned Commuter Authority from the U.S. Department of Transportation and developed scheduled and charter passenger and cargo operations serving Florida, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean. Among notable milestones, Ceravolo led humanitarian operations following Hurricane Dorian, during which the airline evacuated more than 900 people and transported 200,000 pounds of aid over a 10-day period.

Ceravolo succeeds founder James D. "Murph" Murphy, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who established Afterburner in 1996 around a management methodology called Flawless Execution, which adapts fighter squadron practices of planning, briefing, execution and debriefing for corporate teams. The company says that methodology has reached 2.2 million leaders at more than 3,500 organizations, including 85% of the Fortune 500. Afterburner is 100% veteran-owned. Murphy, also the author of the book "Flawless Execution," will remain on the company's Board of Directors and return to delivering keynote presentations under the Afterburner brand.

Industry impact & what to watch

This leadership change places an active amphibious-airline founder atop a corporate training firm built on translating military aviation discipline into business methodology, tightening the link between operational aviation experience and the leadership-training product Afterburner sells. It reflects how veteran-owned aviation-adjacent companies frequently rotate leadership among figures with direct flight-operations backgrounds rather than external management hires, keeping the founder's original playbook intact while refreshing who embodies it publicly.

How Ceravolo balances his continuing ties to Tropic Ocean Airways with running Afterburner, and whether Murphy's shift to a board and keynote role changes how Flawless Execution is delivered to clients, are the details still to surface. The next milestone to watch is how Afterburner communicates this transition to its existing client base of large organizations during the 30th-anniversary period.