Ioan MacRae

CEO, Maintel

What has been your personal highlight of 2021?

The continued transition of the business and with my team helping the Maintel business continue to grow revenues, expand our portfolio, solutions and services, despite the economic backdrop and post-pandemic effects.

How the Maintel team came through 2020, not only as a unified and determined team, but safely! As such, we have seen this team continue its unified approach through 2021.

The Maintel team winning some major customer contracts, especially on the new portfolio around Security, SD-Wan and public cloud offerings on UCaaS and CCaaS.

Which tech figurehead has impressed you the most this year, and why?

Satya Nadella for his transformation and vision at Microsoft, which has proven very successful over the past 18 months. I also continue to admire Elon Musk through his early vision on electric cars, to his wider ambitions on sustainability and environmental wellbeing.

Which one lockdown habit do you plan to keep going?

Checking in on my team. It's been a long and hard 18 months, and I want to continue with our efforts on team wellbeing and, as such, ensure I take the time to speak to my team and ‘check in', rather than always speaking about day-to-day business

Which face-to-face industry event are you most excited to return to, and why?

I have no one particular event, but rather meeting with wider industry colleagues and friends through social events, face-to-face meetings, events, and so on… it's time for normality to return.

If you had the time to learn one new skill, what would it be?

To speak a foreign language.

If you could go back in time and tell your childhood self one thing, what would you say?

Don't try to do everything yourself. As I have matured and taken on more senior roles, I have appreciated the value of working as a team. The collective thoughts, the mix of skills and experiences, will always ensure you collectively make the right decision, believe in that decision and work through to the desire outcome.

If you had to sing karaoke, what would be your song of choice?

I have a terrible voice, so would sing Sweet Caroline in the hope the audience all joined in and masked my appalling singing!

Sum 2021 up in three words.

Challenging, hopeful, rewarding.