Role: Vice President of European Global & Strategic Sales, SHI
What’s been your business high point of the last 12 months?
Building a dedicated European Global and Strategic sales team from the ground up and watching it gain real momentum. While SHI is a global company, the UK arm was very much seen as an extension, whereas now it’s becoming a European powerhouse in its own right.
We’ve gone from largely supporting US flow-down business to originating locally driven opportunities with some of the world’s largest enterprises, and being trusted to do so. Seeing our people step up and own that has been incredibly rewarding.
Name one thing your company is looking to achieve in 2026.
Establishing SHI as a genuine strategic technology partner for multinational clients headquartered in the UK and Europe, not just a procurement channel. That will see us further our client experience and ensure that they perceive SHI a joined-up global organisation, with strong local ownership and accountability. We extend the same level of support that marks SHI out by helping those customers navigate today’s tricky macroeconomic issues from the global memory shortages to the strategic adoption of AI.
What keeps you awake at night as a partner leader?
Talent. Finding, developing and retaining the right people in a market where everyone is fishing in the same pond. Technology is only ever as good as the people behind it, and the pace of change means we need sellers who can hold strategic conversations, not just process transactions. It might seem ironic but in a very technical field where automation is increasingly taking over, people are still the lynchpin of the business.
Is AI being over-hyped?
No, if anything I believe the potential of AI is not being articulated to businesses and societies. The potential is extraordinary, but too many organisations are still experimenting without a clear business case. The winners in 2026 will be those who move past the proof of concept and focus on measurable outcomes. SHI won the 2026 AI Excellence Award precisely because we’ve taken agentic AI from concept to production and we enable our customers to try out their business use cases and establish that proof of concept in our labs. That, along with the ability to determine ROI, are key to the success of AI.
What’s been your most successful internal AI project to date, and why?
Using generative AI, specifically Microsoft Copilot and Claude, to automate our sales performance analysis and executive reporting. What used to take hours of manual effort now delivers instant, contextualised insights from our Power BI data, enabling me and my managers to make faster, better-informed decisions. It’s not glamorous, but it’s genuinely transformative.
Can you share a surprising prediction about how UK IT channel partners or the UK IT channel will evolve over the next 5 years?
Within five years, the traditional VAR will be unrecognisable. Those who don’t see the writing on the wall and adapt fast enough will struggle. The winners will be those outcome partners who blend procurement, advisory and AI enablement into one measurable engagement, and SHI is already building for that future. We’re enabling our customers to experiment and scale, such as through testing AI use cases in a secure environment before committing to production, focusing on cyber resilience as a core pillar and then building managed services and proactive threat capabilities around that which go far beyond product resale. And we’re offering outcome-led advisory services, which see our solutions architects, cyber specialists and cloud experts guide customers to achieve measurable business value.
Which tech gizmo (hardware or software) could you not function without?
My noise cancelling headphones, without question. In a role full of back-to-back calls, travel and the occasional noisy train, they are my instant route to focus. Pop them on, and I can prepare for a client meeting, join a team call, or simply think clearly, wherever I happen to be. Quietly brilliant, and genuinely indispensable.
Which three famous people, dead or alive, would you invite to a dinner party?
Graham Taylor: As a Watford Football Club fan, I would love to have the opportunity to speak with the ex-Watford, Aston Villa, Wolves and England manager. The positive legacy he left behind at Watford still lives on today, and his ability to lead a team from the old 4th division to 2nd in the 1st division is the stuff of dreams.
Sir David Attenborough: The voice of the natural world for nearly 70 years. A career spanning every continent and a perspective on our planet, and our place in it, that few could match.
And finally, I would have to say Thai Lee: 35+ years building SHI from scratch into a $16B business as a female, minority-owned enterprise. That’s a story worth hearing over dinner!
If you had a warning label, what would it say?
“Caution: Will ask ‘what’s the plan?’ repeatedly until there is one.”
Which tech figurehead has impressed you the most this year, and why?
Jensen Huang. While everyone else was talking about AI, he was quietly building the infrastructure that makes it all possible. NVIDIA’s vision has shifted from powering gaming PCs to powering the entire AI economy, and Huang’s ability to stay three steps ahead of the market whilst keeping his teams executing at pace is genuinely remarkable.
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