25 female-run channel partners

Female tech provider bosses including Avanade’s Pam Maynard, Ideal’s Claire Hopkins and European Electronique’s Yolanta Gill tell us about their career journeys and what they really think about diversity in the channel

Female-run channel partners may be in the minority, but as this feature makes clear they are significant in number.

To mark International Women's Day, CRN has profiled 25 women who either run, founded or own front-line tech solution providers, from global resellers to leading MSPs, MSSPs and niche consultancies.

VIEW THE 25 PROFILES HERE

We managed to track down 23 of these power players to find out more about their personal journeys and how they view diversity in the industry.

In all cases, the women in question run their companies, or in one or two cases extremely large company divisions. Often, they are also the founders or owners, making this female ‘power list' unique.

With digital tech now at the heart of all organisations - and outgrowing the wider UK economy - these front-line female leaders play an important role in shaping the future of the business world.

Questions we posed included how they entered the industry, who they regard as their career role models and mentors, what advice they have for women following in their footsteps, and whether they feel the IT industry's gender diversity deficit even warrants highlighting at all.

Our 25 players include a self-made billionaire who founded and runs the US' largest minority-owned business, a CEO who recently swapped a 20-year career in financial services to run a Scottish AWS partner, a woman who recently received an OBE, a serial channel entrepreneur whose first venture was turned down for a loan on the basis of her gender, and CRN's reigning Women in Channel Industry Achievement winner.

They helm a diverse squad of channel partners, from MSPs, cybersecurity providers and Microsoft and AWS partners, to the world's largest global reseller.

VIEW THE 25 PROFILES HERE

CRN Essential subscribers can exclusively view a round-up of some of the key themes that emerged from the interviews here.