Rita Castonguay-Hunt has spent her career with her head in the clouds, whether as a pilot or helping companies navigate regulations to keep drones in the air. “I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little,” Castonguay-Hunt says, but when she realized reaching for the stars may be out of reach, she realized she could still take to the sky as a pilot.
But it is her work as director of commercial operations-global for ArgenTech Solutions, a Newmarket-based Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) integrator and service provider for the defense and commercial sectors, that earned her the 2024 International Businesswoman of the Year award from The World Affairs Council of NH.
Castonguay-Hunt started her career as a pilot for PlaneSense in Portsmouth and as a flight instructor at several NH airports. After that, she joined the Bureau of Aeronautics at the NH Department of Transportation as an aviation planner with a focus on safely integrating UAS or drones into the national airspace system and into airport operations statewide.
Drones and state regulation of them were just in their infancy when Castonguay-Hunt joined the Bureau. “Four years later it was a third of what I did to help people get [commercial drones] into the air safely and legally,” she says.
She joined ArgenTech in 2017 as senior program manager for its commercial UAS services for four years before taking an opportunity with Wingtra, an UAS manufacturer based in Switzerland. However, ArgenTech was able to lure her back in June 2024 to head its global commercial operations.
Castonguay-Hunt’sinternational credentials include participating in the Defense Innovators Forum held in Poland last June, which is by invitation only. She also handled regulatory compliance of drone operations for companies in several countries while working for Wingtra. Now with ArgenTech, she establishes international partnerships with Canadian, Australian, South African, and UK companies, and, most recently participated in a NH trade mission to Brazil with contracts pending.
And she is taking on a larger role at the company as her boss retires in 2025 and Castonguay-Hunt takes over as president of commercial services.
Castonguay-Hunt says one of the biggest challenges facing commercial drone manufacturers is the lack of international operations standards, which means navigating different regulations and standards in each country. It is ArgenTech’s experience with overcoming such hurdles that gives it an edge in the marketplace, she says.
Castonguay-Hunt sees great growth potential as about 65% of commercial business comes from international markets. “We are not afraid of doing the hard projects. When you go into another country, not only are you operating an aircraft that is legal and safe, but you also have a ton of logistics to worry about,” she says, ticking off everything from securing work visas to ensuring you can get your people out of trouble zones safely. “Our leadership has the experience of doing all those things.” For more information, visit argentechsolutions.com or wacnh.org.
