He became the first employee of McCaw Cellular Communications in the early 1980s.[9] He was COO and vice chairman of McCaw Cellular in the 1980s.[3]
After he left McCaw he founded the company that became Western Wireless Corp in 1992.[9] From 1992 to 2005, he was at Western Wireless Corp. as CEO and chairman.[3] He was the founder of Voicestream Wireless Corp.[9] Between 1995 and 2003, VoiceStream Wireless had him as chairman and CEO as well, with that company renamed T-Mobile USA after an acquisition.[3]
In 2004, Stanton was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame for his devotion to the industry.[10]
From 2008 until 2013 he was director and then chairman of Clearwire Corp.[3]
In 2005, he, Strive Masiyiwa, Bradley Horwitz, and others formed Trilogy International Partners.[11][12][13] At the start, Stanton had a $295 million equity stake in Trilogy.[12] In 2006, his net worth was $1 billion.[14] Stanton was listed as #840 in the Forbes 2007 "Richest People" study. His net worth was estimated at US$1.1 billion.[6]
Stanton joined Microsoft's board of directors in July 2014.[3][15][16] He joined the Compensation Committee of the board.[3] He was also a director at Columbia Sportswear.[3]
Around 2016, he joined the board of Costco.[9] As of August 2016, Stanton was reported to own approximately US$45 million of stock holdings in Columbia Sportswear, General Communication Inc. and other companies.[17]
He is a past chairman of the board of trustees of Whitman College.[6][7] In 2018, Whitman College elected to name a newly constructed residence hall after Stanton, who had graduated in 1977.[18]
He is still a member of Trilogy International Partners with Theresa Gillespie and Brad Horwitz. It trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange.[1] He is also chairman of Trilogy Equity and co-founder of Trilogy Search Partners.[19]
As one of 17 minority owners in the team,[5] in April 2016, Stanton was appointed as the new CEO of the Seattle Mariners organization after Nintendo sold its majority stake for $661 million.[5][20]Major League Baseball formally approved the sale of the Mariners to Stanton in August of that year.[21] Stanton took over as control person from retiring chairman Howard Lincoln.[21] Stanton became responsible for the Seattle Mariners day-to-day operations.[22] In 2019, the team had few wins, with Stanton arguing the metric to look at was player success within a long term plan.[23]
In 2014, he had chaired or co-chaired the Business Partnership for Early Learning, the United Way of King County campaign, the Washington Roundtable, and the Regional Transportation Commission.[3]
