John Shanahan

As CEO of MagnaTerra Technologies, he brings a leadership profile that is rare in the deep-tech world: a decorated operational commander who has built and led high-performance teams under extreme pressure, and a proven technology entrepreneur transforming that experience into sensing solutions that matter. 

Concurrently CEO of MRead Pty Ltd, MagnaTerra's sister technology venture developing field-ready sensors for explosive and drug detection, he has spent the past several years bridging the gap between battlefield-proven operational intelligence and commercial sensing innovation. Before founding MRead, he served as Executive Director at Synergy Group, managing complex, multi-million dollar programmes in the Australian Defence sector. His military career spanned three decades of operational command across NATO and Coalition forces, including deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

He led the British Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation in Lebanon in 2006, coordinating a multi-agency response under live threat conditions from Headquarters British Forces Cyprus, precisely the kind of high-stakes, zero-margin environment that forged his approach to risk, innovation, and decisive leadership. He has worked across the Middle East, South Asia, and the Indo-Pacific with governments, NGOs, and primary aid agencies in Jordan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Thailand, developing the cross-cultural partnership skills and operational adaptability that now underpin MagnaTerra's international growth strategy.