Ian Kilpatrick

NED, Northamber

What has been your personal highlight of 2025?

My highlight is adding to my role working with a great team and the great volunteers at Tech Channel Ambassadors and working with the channel, to my unexpected return to fully back IN the channel with my unexpected, exciting and interesting Non exec role with Northamber.

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

What was your first job in the channel? My career was like the majority in the channel – ACCIDENTAL. Kilpatrick Stephens, a financial consultancy I was a partner in, took shares, in exchange for our services, for setting up a small company called Wick Hill Associates for a number of HP staff. It was so much, much more fun than accountancy I became a director and sold my consultancy. While we sold worldwide to the HP3000 market, in a three-person company Director was another name for do every job that's required. The only way to continue my first and only channel role was to help grow Wick Hill.

What’s your personal sustainability commitment for 2026?

Continuing my journey towards Net Zero.

What’s one hidden talent or skill your colleagues wouldn’t suspect you have?

For anyone who can imagine me, probably in sepia, as a 19-year-old junior international - my steeplechase time still clings on in the All Time List.

What’s your advice for new graduates/apprentices in the channel, in three words?

Find good mentors.

What was your first day in your current role like?

Extremely interesting and exciting, getting up to speed with the ever changing strategic and tactical challenges of the channel - I still love it.

Who has been the most influential figure in your career so far?

Patrick Dodds my first boss and mentor par excellence. He guided my route into accountancy, into commerce, my personal finances, respecting people, having fun at work, confidence in myself and much, much more. What a role model. All of this at a time when you called your Boss Sir and he was Patrick.