2024 may go down as a watershed year for female CEO appointments at UK channel partners.
Despite three of the four largest US-headquartered global resellers (CDW, SHI and Insight) having been female led for years (not to mention Nordic giant Crayon), the UK has arguably been slow to follow suit.
But following a flurry of appointments, three of the UK’s top ten channel partners (as measured by this year’s Oxygen 250) now have female CEOs.
Among the wider Oxygen 250, the number of female CEOs has also risen (despite some notable female CEO departures).
Such appointments come despite the latest UK gender pay gap figures indicating that UK channel partners have made tangible, yet limited, progress on gender balance and pay over the last six years.
Here we round up six top 250 firms that made female CEO appointments in 2024, in reverse order of size.
InTEC Group
Revenues: Circa £25m
CEO appointment: Melissa Rambridge
Context
Having joined InTEC in July 2023 via its acquisition of her Sweethaven business, Rambridge was in November made CEO of the wider business.
Rambridge recently spoke to IT Channel Oxygen about the support she had received from InTEC in juggling her high-flying exec career with having two young children.
Sweethaven was one of about 15 MSPs Manchester-based inTEC acquired during a seven-year buy-and-build spree fuelled by Duke Royalty.
What she said
“Everyone has been super understanding and I’ve never had any pushback or anyone questioning whether I’m therefore not fit for purpose for the job. It comes round to trust – ‘we trust you to do your job well and understand how important it is to spend time with your family’.
“If anything, it’s the slightly older generation around me who are the ones saying ‘make the most of the time now; you don’t get it back’. They’re encouraging me to reduce travel or to take the days when I need them, and I think that’s brilliant. That’s real progression in terms of a workplace culture.”
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