Jan Lawford

Senior director of EMEA channels at VCE

Career history: Senior director EMEA channels at Avaya; EMEA commercial director at Bell Microproducts; EMEA area vice president at RSA

Measure of influence: Responsible for a team of 32 staff, 416 partners and around $350m of channel revenue

Activities to advance women in tech: Active member of the internal W@V initiative which supports elevating women at VCE and regular speaker at schools.

How significant an issue do you see the lack of women in the UK IT channel?
The underlying issue that must be addressed to solve this problem is the hidden and often overt discrimination that prevails in the tech industry. The reality is that gender bias is still so ubiquitous in IT that it forces talented female employees to leave.