Shannon Speight grew up with an affinity for animals, leading her to pursue a degree in veterinary science with a goal of working to save orangutans. However, during her time at university, Shannon ventured into bovine and livestock research and developed an interest in working with cattle. She quickly realised she would need hands-on experience to best understand this work and applied for a position on a cattle station in Katherine, Northern Territory. Shannon says it was this formative experience that proved a lasting influence in developing her interest in working in the livestock industry. 

Following a stint working in the Katherine veterinary clinic, Shannon completed her degree and took up a position as the Charters Towers large animal veterinarian, where she honed her skills in livestock medicine. In 2017, Shannon coordinated a large-scale genomics project detecting puberty in heifers which saw her conduct more than 30,000 ovarian scans and clock up nearly 80,0000 kilometres per year traveling across Queensland, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory. 

Shannon was awarded the prestigious Zanda McDonald Award in 2019. As part of the Award program, she traveled across Australia and New Zealand, spending time with leaders in the farm sector, and learning more about the livestock industry. It was during this trip she noticed a huge problem – while there was an incredible amount of data in the beef supply chain, there was a lack of meaningful consolidation and analysis of that data, and the idea for Black Box Co was born. 

A day in Shannon’s life at Black Box has her meeting with various department heads to discuss business goals, potential new clients’, operations, and growth strategies. Shannon enjoys the fact that day-to-day she works with a wide variety of people across the livestock industry and supply chain. She is particularly proud of the role Black Box plays in being part of the solution when it comes to making farmers’ lives easier, and ensuring clients can get the most out of their data.