Anthony (Tony) Rohan Gunewardena
Co-Founder & CEO
Tony has spent more than 45 years in the magnetics and electronics manufacturing industry, holding positions in manufacturing, testing, engineering, production control, and executive leadership. Inspired by the career of his father Shelly, Tony developed an early passion for electronics but chose to forge his own path rather than work in his father's shadow. Beginning as a test technician, he worked his way up through the industry and eventually became head of engineering, developing his expertise almost entirely through hands-on experience and self-directed learning.
While working for Standard Industries in the early 1980s, Tony served as the head engineer responsible for the planar magnetics used in the MX Peacekeeper Missile program for Northrop Corporation. He successfully qualified all 12 magnetic components for the program, representing some of the first high-reliability, military-grade planar magnetics of their kind. Later in the decade, Tony developed and manufactured high-reliability planar transformers used exclusively in Raytheon's ultra-thin power supplies, components that would ultimately support systems associated with the International Space Station.
In the late 1980s, Tony approached Shelly with the idea of starting Mil-Spec Magnetics, Inc. Together, they agreed the company would separate itself from the industry through a few defining principles: take on the difficult and complicated magnetic components others struggled to manufacture, solve problems rather than simply build to print, and never compromise on quality or reliability.Mil-Spec Magnetics was founded in 1990 with approximately 10 employees in a 3,000-square-foot facility. Tony initially headed production control while remaining heavily involved in manufacturing and engineering. As the company grew, he personally developed specialized tooling, fixtures, manufacturing processes, and even in-house winding equipment for complex copper-foil transformers.
Today, Tony remains deeply involved in Mil-Spec's technical operations. He continues to perform a significant portion of the company's quotations, keeping him intimately familiar with material costs, manufacturing requirements, and labor times. He also personally reviews customer designs for manufacturability and reliability, recommending changes when necessary. If Mil-Spec believes a design presents an unacceptable reliability risk and the customer is unwilling to make the necessary changes, the company will decline the project rather than put its name on a product it cannot stand behind with confidence. That quality-first philosophy has helped Mil-Spec maintain approximately 98.7% throughput through production and, after more than 36 years in business, no known field failures.
Tony has also personally trained and mentored generations of Mil-Spec's Engineers. Because the company has traditionally hired electrical and mechanical engineers rather than experienced magnetics engineers, much of their specialized magnetics knowledge has been developed under his guidance. A relentless problem solver and hands-on leader, Tony remains one of the hardest-working members of the Mil-Spec team, regularly working long hours and weekends while maintaining a personal connection with employees throughout the company. He makes it a point to greet every member of the staff each morning and has built a culture in which employees are treated like family. Today, Mil-Spec Magnetics continues to stay on the cutting edge of technology with proprietary processes still unique within the industry, including perfect-layer winding and void-free encapsulation on wire as fine as 48 AWG—approximately four times thinner than a human hair. More than four decades into his career, Tony's guiding principle remains the same: build only the products Mil-Spec can stand behind with absolute confidence. Profitability Through Excellence.