Colm Gannon
Chief Executive Officer, International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children – Australia
Colm Gannon is a distinguished professional with over twenty years of experience in digital safety, child protection, cybercrime investigations, and software development.
In December 2024, he assumed the role of CEO at ICMEC Australia and brought extensive expertise to the organisation.
Previously, Colm served as a Detective with An Garda Síochána (Irish National Police), Principal Advisor with the Digital Safety Directorate in New Zealand, Founder of Pathfinder Labs, and Product Manager at Rigr AI (Ireland), specialising in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. His career spans law enforcement and private industry, focusing on leveraging technology to address online harms and promote child safety.
Colm has been instrumental in shaping policies and strategies for child protection, privacy impact assessments, ethical AI implementations, and technological process reforms. He has led national and international investigations into online child exploitation, violent extremism, and harmful online communications, collaborating with multi-disciplinary teams to combat these threats.
A skilled stakeholder manager, Colm has built strategic relationships across law enforcement, government, NGOs, academia, and private industry. He has represented New Zealand internationally, including as a subject matter expert for the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, and has trained law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges for Europol.
Colm holds an MSc in Forensic Computing and Cybercrime Investigations from University College Dublin and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at La Trobe University. He has been actively involved with ICMEC since 2010 and contributes to the Financial Coalition to Combat Child Exploitation.
