Hayley Roberts talks career history, the agility of distribution, and women in tech
The Distology founder speaks to CRN as part of its women in tech series and discusses how she “fell” into the industry and why she stayed
Distology celebrated its ten-year anniversary in April since being founded by Roberts in 2015.
This year the distributor also surpassed the £60m annual revenue benchmark and grew EBITDA by 23 per cent.
Roberts is gunning for £100m in turnover next.
But before Distology was even on the horizon, Roberts found her way into tech the same way others often do.
“Like most people, I fell into it,” she tells CRN.
“I graduated in business and then worked for a toiletries manufacturer, a publishing business, and a head-hunting business where I set up the Dell team in Moscow. That was the closest I got to tech.
“I had children in the midst of all that, then in the 2007/08 credit crunch I got made redundant along with most of the people in the head-hunting business.
“I thought, ‘great, this gives me an opportunity to think about what I want to do.’
“I contacted a company, got an interview and off we went.”
The company in question was Altimate Group, a European value-added distributor for Symantec, IBM, NetApp and Oracle.
Altimate was acquired by Arrow ECS in 2012 for £40m.
This led Roberts to a new distie business where she ran a unit, until spending time in ‘vendor land’.
“Then I decided there was apathy in the distribution landscape. So why not set up a distributor? And the rest is history.”
Having spent more than a decade in tech and the distribution scene, Roberts highlights agility as her main reason for staying.
“Agility is really key in distribution.
“Where you sit is brilliant.
“Being wedded to one technology area that I wasn't necessarily madly in love with was putting all my eggs in one basket.
“Whereas if you go into a distribution role you do a lot more research, you're agile, you can see a lot of things that are going on, you can work with many customers and resellers.”
Describing herself as a magpie, Roberts adds she enjoys learning what other businesses are out there, what they do and how they operate.
This curiosity shines through in the way Distology handles vendors, often selecting organisations in new technology areas with the likes of Flare, Radiflow and Halcyon.
“Also, customer service levels at that point in distribution were absolutely shocking from what I was hearing from friends working for partners and other vendors.
“And I thought, that's simple. We can do that. That's just good customer service. If you set a business up just doing that and make money, then the rest should be better.”
Getting women into tech
According to the 2025 Lovelace Report, 80 per cent of women working in tech are looking to exit.
The research found that the cost to enterprise tech employers and the wider digital economy of 40,000 to 60,000 women either switching tech jobs or deserting the sector altogether is estimated at £2bn to £3.5bn annually.
However, engaging with young women at an early stage of their tech career is another industry issue.
Roberts offers her advice to women who are put off by the perceived complexity of the tech sector.
“No job, apart from being a doctor, lawyer or dentist for example, needs anything other than just your skill set.
“Everyone’s got a different skill set.
“The beauty of the tech industry is we need all skill sets.
“We really do need to stop putting these barriers in our own minds.
“Yes, there are technical elements to it. Of course there are. But you know, the percentage of people that code is low.
“And in the age of AI, this is about what we can put into the tech industry as it grows and develops that’s not replaceable by AI and that is the human element, and everyone's got that.”