A Pax8 executive has opened up on how he was inspired by his inclusion in Oxygen Influencers to begin promoting the IT industry in schools – despite characterising his own school years as “traumatic”.
Pax8 AI Platform Lead Andy Readman appeared in the first year of Oxygen Influencers alongside 24 other women and men nominated by their peers for driving positive industry change from outside the boardroom.
In this special Oxygen Influencers podcast, Readman revealed his attendance of a subsequent Oxygen Influencers lunch inspired him to look into schools outreach work.
“I was inspired by so many people there that were doing schools outreach programmes,” he said during the podcast (see above for highlights, and full episode below).
“School was a bit of a traumatic time for me, and I wasn’t looking forward to getting back inside a school any time soon.
“But it was the realisation that I have achieved things maybe against the odds a little bit.”
“Going and giving the answers the kids want to hear, even the ones where the teachers were like, ‘he cannot ask you that’. I was like, ‘no, I’ll tell you how much I get paid; whatever he wants to know’.”
In his daily role, Readman looks after MSPs or – ‘managed intelligence providers’ as Pax8 now refers to them.
“I can talk to MSPs all day within the Pax8 sphere, but being able to extend that into schools and share that with the wider world is great,” he said.
Readman was joined in the studio by Richard Eglon, CMO at Oxygen Influencers sponsor Nebula Global Services.
His podcast comes after we caught up with two other Oxygen Influencers to talk about how the channel can better attract and retain fresh talent in the shape of Distology’s Daniel Evans and Telefonica Tech’s Tiffany Nelson (see here, here and here).
“It’s not just the recognition that’s really important for me, but the platform and foundation it’s given me to go and achieve more,” Readman said of what it meant to be crowned an Oxygen Influencer.
“It’s given me the conviction and the belief to go on and achieve even more since then.”
