Virginia’s 50 most powerful execs
Virginia Business
March 1, 2024
Stu Shea, Chairman, President & CEO
A fixture in the national security industry, Shea has led the expansion of the private company into a major defense contractor through a series of acquisitions, including the 2021 purchase of Northrop Grumman’s federal IT and mission support services business.
In 2023, Peraton moved its headquarters from Herndon to Reston, which serves as a hub for 5,000 of the company’s 19,000 employees. In February 2023, Peraton won one of eight Navy contracts that is expected to be worth $4 billion over the next 10 years, and this January, the Army Cyber Command awarded a $889 million contract to provide support to the Cyber Command headquarters. In December, the company hired a new chief financial officer, Ken Sharp, who will report to Shea.
As a young software engineer, Shea tapped his expertise in geography and geology to design some of the earliest computer mapping systems for the CIA, the National Security Agency and the U.S. Air Force.
Shea founded the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation and is a board member for the National Intelligence University Foundation and Riverside Research.