Leadership
Our experienced leadership team shares a passion for excellence in service, and for developing and implementing solutions to empower our clients to succeed.
We believe the goal of excellence requires a balance of strong direction and careful insight, starting at the most senior level.
James is a senior executive leader, experienced in the creation and building of scale-up teams for commercial innovation and growth ventures within the B2B technology sector. He is currently supporting the introduction and development of Advania’s High performance Compute (HPC) business from the Nordics to the UK&I. Previously, James was a long-standing executive and shareholder of CCS Media, holding senior leadership roles that focused on strategic people-centric growth and organisational development that contributed to multiple organic growth phases prior to the company’s acquisition in October 2024.
Sabrina is the UK CFO for Advania, she is a strategic and action-oriented finance leader with over 12 years of post-qualified experience, known for turning financial insight into decisive action in complex environments. Previously held Finance Director roles at BT, leading large international teams and multi-billion-pound P&Ls, and partnering with executive and Board-level leaders to drive profitable growth, cost transformation, and strong governance. Passionate about high-performing teams, and long-term value creation.
Paul, who has been the CEO of Servium for the last 15 years, will integrate sales and marketing capabilities from all three businesses into one cohesive team, ensuring a coordinated and strategic approach to delivering services to clients. Paul and the team will be responsible for managing and enhancing our relationship with our existing clients and also acquiring new clients who can take advantage of the capabilities within the business. He will also lead on marketing and positioning the Advania brand and offerings in the UK market.
Thea brings a wealth of experience within the People and Talent sphere, having worked across both corporate and start-up environments in Finance, Professional Services and Tech industries. As Chief People Officer, Thea’s focus is on organic growth of each team within the business and harnessing the impressive capability across the group.
Chris is a technology leader with over 25 years’ experience of working with technologies to transform how organisations work, with the last decade in leadership roles. As CTO, Chris is responsible for shaping technology strategy and driving innovation across services and products – this includes leading a big part of Advania UK’s approach to AI & automation, and overseeing Fresh, our Microsoft 365-based digital workplace product designed for the AI era.
Chris has been in the business over 15 years, with the last decade in leadership roles. His earlier background was as a deep hands-on technologist – managing development teams, leading cloud solution delivery, and writing code.
Chris is a recognised thought leader in the technology community. He has been recognised by Microsoft as a ‘Most Valuable Professional’ for the last 18 consecutive years now, helping Microsoft shape their services and giving him early access to strategy and roadmap. Chris regularly speaks at industry events and publishes on LinkedIn and a highly regarded technical blog at www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com.
With over 30 years industry experience, Nick Isherwood serves as CIO and CISO for Advania UK, driving the organisation’s technology strategy. Nick is responsible for shaping and executing Advania UK’s digital transformation initiatives, ensuring technology investments align with business objectives and deliver value to internal teams and clients. He oversees highly experienced teams that manage enterprise architecture, IT operations and support, and innovation programmes, while maintaining robust governance and compliance frameworks.
As CISO, Nick leads the organisation’s information security strategy, safeguarding critical assets and ensuring resilience against evolving cyber threats. His remit includes risk management, regulatory compliance, and embedding cyber security best practices across all business functions. With a focus on strategic leadership, Nick enables Advania UK to leverage technology securely and effectively to support growth and operational excellence.
Nick is also passionate about supporting the Microsoft partnership and strategy across all Advania countries. His focus ensures Advania continue to offer services across AI, Security, Business Applications and Hybrid Cloud, supporting clients with technology adoption, transformation and support.
Des has been with the business for over 15 years and in the industry for 20+ years. He has a proven track record of shaping and delivering Managed Services in a fast-paced industry. His technical and business background helps ensure we are leveraging the best of technology to help provide services that solve business needs. Des oversees the managed service part of the business leading a team of over 4,500 people delivering services 24/7/365.
Patrick is a well-rounded leader who has led our consulting business for over 15 years. Overall, he has over 25 years’ experience working on various tech projects. He leads an incredibly talented team of consultants who are dedicated to delighting our client’s and helping them achieve their organisational goals. Patrick believes our clients must be at the centre of everything we do and building long term, high value relationships.
As Business Director of Mirus, Dan leads a team passionate about delivering exceptional value to clients, bringing the most innovative and creative services and solutions. As an expert in the wide array of solutions that makes up IT and tech, he brings more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry, working alongside our clients to bring the best and most appropriate solutions to their individual businesses.
Previously Ægir was Director of Human Resources at Advania Group and Managing Director of Consulting at Capacent.
Gestur G. Gestsson is the chairman of the board. He was the Group CEO of Advania from 2009 to 2019 and has extensive management and board experience in IT and telecommunications. Previously, he was the CMO and later CTO at Vodafone Iceland, CMO of the interactive gaming company Betware and CEO of the Icelandic pioneering ISP Margmiðlun. He has served as Chairman of the Board of top-level domain registry Internet in Iceland and had the same position at Vodafone in the Faroe Islands. Gestur holds a degree in Political Science and Economics from the University of Iceland.
Henrik is the Chief Financial Officer of Advania Group, he has over 20 years of experience in financial leadership. Henrik brings extensive expertise in Private Equity, infrastructure, and publicly listed companies, with a strong focus on driving financial excellence. Previously, Henrik served as CFO at GlobalConnect, EVRY ASA, and ISS. He also acts as a Value Accelerator Operating Advisor at Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
Hege comes from Oslo and has worked in the IT industry for almost 30 years, 15 of those at Microsoft and the rest at large Norwegian IT companies like Crayon and Geodata where she held leading positions. Hege joined Advania as Deputy CEO after the acquisition of Visolit, where she was CEO for four years.
Formerly, the CEO of Advania Sweden, Mikael has been with the business since 2010. In 2017 he took up the group COO role, shortly thereafter becoming Group CEO in 2019.
Prior to joining our board of directors, Colin was the managing director at Softcat plc, one of the UK’s leading IT infrastructure providers. During his eight years at Softcat, Colin oversaw rapid growth and was part of the leadership team that brought the organisation to its IPO, resulting in Softcat’s listing on the FTSE 250. Before this, he drove the adoption and deployment of Microsoft technology as general manager of UK services for Microsoft, which followed his position as CEO at Computacenter Germany. Colin’s focus as a leader has been on creating a strong culture, generating the highest levels of employee engagement and passionate followership, and setting a clear strategic direction.
We are a technology services, solutions and support business with a passion for helping ambitious organisations and their people to succeed. Our people aim to deliver exceptional results and have the experience and expertise to deliver a consistent quality to our clients.
Do you like nothing better than helping others to achieve their goals? We are constantly working to gather and develop the best individuals who our common passion.
