Our Team
Richard (Rick) Froh
President & Partner
Mr Richard (Rick) Froh graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada in 1972 with a Bachelor of Engineering degree. For over 25 years, he held various command and staff appointments in combat and construction engineering units, as well as in general staff appointments. He served in formation and national headquarters in Canada, as well as in Canada’s NATO-assigned forces in Europe. After retiring from the Canadian Army in October 1996, Mr Froh has held the following NATO HQ positions, Head, Land Armaments Section, Head of the new Joint Armaments Section, NATO’s Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Armaments, Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Operations In July 2018, Mr Froh joined Allied Support Services International Group (ASSIG) as its Chief Executive Officer.
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Gunnar Borch
CEO & Partner
Navy Captain Gunnar Borch concluded his 42-year tenure with the Norwegian Navy in 2008, embarking on a new chapter as the General Manager of the NATO Airlift Management Agency in Capellen, Luxembourg. His dedication to service extended to NATO until his retirement in July 2013. With over 25 years of invaluable international staff and leadership experience across diverse NATO and other international assignments, Gunnar possesses a profound understanding of multinational armaments cooperation, notably in Smart Defence and Pooling & Sharing initiatives, having overseen three such programs. His naval career spans approximately 13 years spent aboard submarines, frigates, and corvettes, culminating in his role as commanding officer of a corvette. Gunnar is a graduate of the Norwegian Naval Academy (1976) and the Senior National Staff College (1989), complemented by extensive participation in warfare and staff officers’ courses both domestically and abroad. In 2013, he joined ASSIG, marking a continuation of his esteemed professional journey.
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Boris Rousseff
Director & Partner
Boris Rousseff has had a career in international finance and top management. He started as a financial analyst in FORD Werke AG in Cologne, Germany. Next he was European treasurer and international sales financing manager of JI Case in Leeds, UK and Paris. He spent seven years in a Wall Street investment bank as manager of international trading operations. His career then moved on to the Defence Industry. He first was a director of Finance of PRB, a European Defence Group with activities in Europe, the Middle and Far East and Latin America. He returning to Europe in 1988, and started lobbying for Japanese corporate clients. Soon after, he joined with a well known European lobbyist and founded CLAN public affairs which represented North American and European companies in their dealing with the EU institutions. He was also appointed managing director of CERT, the Canadian European Round Table for business, the main lobbying tool of Canadian interests in the EU market. Boris PhD in international law and holds an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau.
Sean Midwood - VP North America & Partner
Sean Midwood CD2, SSM, MSc, BEng, IEEE (Snr Mbr)
Sean Midwood joins ASSIG after a 47-year career with the Royal Canadian Navy, NATO’s NCIA and as an independent consultant specializing in tech startups related to the fields of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance(ISR). Sean has extensive experience in Operations, Program/Project Management and Board Governance. Sean specialized in Combat Systems: Held Senior Operational/Engineering Staff positions; was the Officer in Charge during the disposal of HMCS MACKENZIE and construction/delivery of HMCS REGINA; was PM for 2 Major Crown Projects(CANTASS/SQS 510): and was a Project Engineer for the NATO Sea Sparrow Missile System. At NATO’s NC3A/NCIA Sean specialized in and led various Joint ISR (Multi-Sensor Aerospace- Ground Joint(ISR) Interoperability Coallition(MAJIIC)/Alliance Ground Surveillance(AGS)) teams and was the Chief Of Staff to the Chief Technology Officer and Director of Service Strategy.
Sean attended the United States Naval Post Graduate School where he earned a Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering focused on Engineering Acoustics and Multi Sensor Data Fusion within the Undersea Warfare Program.​
Hubert Heuer - Associate Consultant
Colonel Hubert Heuer retired from the German Air Force (GAF) in December 2006 after more than 40 years of service. At the time of his retirement, Hubert was serving as Chief Logistics, NATO Airborne Early Warning and Control Programme Management Agency (NAPMA). During his lengthy career in the GAF, Hubert served in a wide variety of senior positions in the Logistics and Engineering communities. Hubert holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and a degree in Systems Management. His background includes many years of experience in aircraft maintenance, weapons and munitions, systems acquisition management, and personnel management. From 1999 to 2006 Hubert was Chief Logistics of the NATO Airborne Early Warning & Control Force Command at SHAPE, Belgium, and at NAPMA, The Netherlands. Hubert was an Associate Consultant with CFN Consultants, a Canadian Company, from 2006 to 2010
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Donald Turnbull - Associate Consultant
Donald Turnbull served 31 years in the RAF and 6 years with the International Staff at NATO HQ, Brussels. He attended Advanced Staff College in India and he is a former Defence Attaché to Sweden and Finland.
Mr Turnbull retired from the RAF in 2015 and joined the International Staff in NATO HQ where he worked in the Defence Investment Division on aerospace capability development. Key projects included: Distributed Synthetic Training; Next Generation Rotorcraft; Air-to-Air Refuelling; Strategic & Tactical Airlift; Rapid Air Mobility; Deployable Air Bases; Performance Equivalence for Military Aircraft against civil ATM/CNS criteria; NATO Flying Training Europe; and Operational Fuels as part of the NATO Climate Change agenda. He retired from the International Staff in November 2021.
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Basha Hifato - Associate Consultant
Mr. Basha Hifato is a Canadian entrepreneur and business executive with broad range of experience developed over the past 20 years in business dealings in Sub Saharan Africa, Europe and North America. He currently serves as Executive Director and an officer of Horn Metals Ltd, a Canadian owned and operated exploration and mining company. Horn Metals is actively working mineral properties in Zambia and Namibia and holds right of first refusal on properties in Tanzania. The Horn Metals Board consider Mr. Hifato as a key officer of the company who drives the company's expansion throughout Africa. For many years, Basha has worked with a number of African governments to promote economic and social development in Africa. His portfolio of contacts throughout North America, Europe and especially Africa is formidable and wide ranging. Over the years of doing business in Africa, Basha has also built a network of quasi-government officials in the Defence and Security field in many African countries. This has led the partners of Allied Support Service International Group (ASSIG) to take him on staff in late 2021 as their Associate Consultant for African Affairs.
Mr. Hifato is a business graduate of Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology, Ottawa, Ontario
Bogdan Horvat - Associate Consultant
Mr Bogdan Horvat graduated from the Military Academy in 1985 in Belgrade, Serbia, with a thesis on an engineering unit providing temporary means for a brigade advance during a large-scale military combat operation.
During his 25-year career, he held various command and staff positions in the Slovenian Army and senior positions in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of the Republic of Slovenia. Among others, he was a company commander in the first generation of Slovenian soldiers, playing an essential role in the first years of the creation of the Slovenian Army. His first assignment abroad was the position of Defence Advisor for Armaments (NADREP) in the Slovenian Delegation to NATO. He held that position for almost eight years, working on various armaments-related issues and several of the most critical NATO projects, such as Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS), Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD), Missile Defence (MD), Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) and Defence Against Terrorism (DAT). He values SAC as the most important project he was involved in, as his active participation and dedication resulted in being selected as the very first NATO Airlift Management Organization (NAMO) Board of Directors (BoD) Chairperson.
After leaving the Slovenian MoD, he was selected for the position of Executive Officer in the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance Management Agency (NAGSMA). He held that position for fourteen years. Mr Horvat left NATO in December 2023. He joined ASSIG in January 2024.
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IN MEMORY
Raymond (Ray) Sturgeon Ex. President passed away on 28 November 2023.
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