Appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Sapphire in 2015, with a career spanning over 21 years in the cyber security industry, Annabel has been recognised by CRN as one of the most influential women in the UK IT channel and included in their A-List for 2018 and 2019. Excelling in leadership, the development and implementation of new strategies and identifying emerging technologies, Annabel also takes an active involvement in encouraging more women into the cyber security industry. She is also proud to be a Leadership Fellow at St. George’s House, Windsor Castle.

As vice president of Vice President, Business Development & Marketing, Bob Olwig has company-wide responsibility for driving World Wide Technology’s strategic initiatives, global marketing, business development and global alliances. Bob joined WWT in 1996, and from 1999 to 2002 Bob served as CTO for Telcobuy.com. Bob has more than 35 years of experience in the information technology industry, including various technical, marketing, sales and sales management responsibilities at McDonnell Douglas Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation and Novell. Bob holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Saint Louis University. Bob serves as Board President of St. Patrick Center, an organization driving to eliminate homelessness in St. Louis, MO.

Gareth Davies is the Head of IT & Infrastructure at UNiDAYS. He has been working in technology for the last nine years in a variety of technical and management roles, including IT helpdesk positions and technical support within the live events industry, global systems administration and management. He currently leads teams to provide cloud-first, people-centric solutions for internal business and public-facing infrastructure platforms.

He is most likely to be found talking endlessly about why everyone needs to dedicate more time to utilising checklists, assisting people as a Mental Health First Aider, and trying to automate himself out of his job.

Manuj Sarpal is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for GraniteShares, which is a global Asset management with more than $1.5 billion in AUM. He has worked on numerous technology implementations for Asset management and Financial services from inception, development, listings, distribution and operations of Exchange Traded Products globally. Manuj has acquired an MBA from the Cass Business School, London and also pursuing Certificate in Quantitative finance. He has more than 20 years of professional experience, which spans from consulting, software development and technology leadership. In past, he has worked for ETF Securities and Barclays to implement complex and large scale successful IT Transformation projects. He has keen interest in the role of technology especially in Cloud, Machine Learning and AI.

Having sold Kelway to CDW in 2015, Phil Doye returned to the industry last year when he acquired SBL (which was renamed ‘boxxe’ on 1 September).

He is CEO of the York-based Microsoft partner, which counts the MoD and broader public sector among its key vertical markets. 

Sara Yirrell left Incisive Media in December 2016 to become a freelance journalist and content consultant specialising in all things IT channel. B

efore that she had worked at Incisive-owned CRN since August 2000, holding the title of Editorial Director since October 2014. She was the editorial driving force behind the brand since becoming Editor in 2007, and oversaw the expansion to incorporate channelnomics.eu and channelnomics.com, which created the first true global channel network, and was recently rebranded as Channel Partner Insight.

Before joining CRN, Sara worked on local daily newspaper The Northampton Chronicle & Echo for three years covering areas such as crime, local politics, education, business and transport.

Shaun led a successful MBO to set up Agilitas back in 2014 from the previous business ACAL plc. As CEO of Agilitas, Shaun is responsible for the strategic vision of the business and commits a large proportion of his time working with clients to identify what is core to them and their customers and what is context to ensure the Agilitas strategy is aligned to the needs of the market. As one of the leading figures in the channel, Shaun has delivered success in a number of senior roles at global technology companies including IBM, Sun Microsystems and Oracle serving some of the world’s leading businesses including Cable & Wireless, NTL, JPMC, Defra, ABN Amro and Astra Zenecca.