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 Hardy leads Advania UK with a commercial mindset, strategic vision, and a deep understanding of what it takes to grow a modern IT business at scale. As former Group Chief Commercial Officer at Advania UK and long-time executive at CCS Media, James brings over two decades of experience in sales leadership, business transformation, and strategic alliances.
Prior to stepping into the CEO role in 2025, James played a pivotal role in the integration of CCS Media into Advania Group, helping to build one of the UK’s largest and most capable technology solutions providers. His leadership contributed to the expansion of Advania UK’s client base, revenue growth, and service portfolio bringing together hardware, software, and managed services under one unified brand.
James has held a range of executive roles over 18 years at CCS Media, including Managing Director and Chief Commercial Officer, where he drove consistent year-on-year growth and developed high-performing teams across the UK. He has a proven track record of fostering strategic vendor partnerships and aligning technology portfolios with real customer needs.
In addition to his corporate leadership, James is a respected contributor to the academic-business dialogue, serving as an Honorary Fellow at Durham University Business School and Leader in Residence at Leeds University Business School.
At Advania, James leads with a clear belief: that trusted relationships, deep expertise, and commercial creativity are the foundation of long-term success, for clients, partners, and employees alike.
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.
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.
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 400 people delivering services 24/7/365.
Chris has over 20 years’ experience of working with Microsoft technologies to transform how organisations work. He’s spent a lot of time leading Microsoft 365 and SharePoint delivery, and has a background in managing development teams. Chris regularly speaks at Microsoft and industry events, and has worked for Microsoft in the past as a SharePoint field engineer. In technology terms, his core strengths are around the Microsoft cloud stack – especially Microsoft 365 (including Teams, SharePoint and the Power Platform) and Azure. Chris is one of only a handful of people in the UK recognised by Microsoft as a Microsoft ‘Most Valuable Professional’ – and has been for the past 15 years. He’s had significant early exposure to aspects of Microsoft 365 and SharePoint in this capacity and works with Microsoft on several private programmes as they develop the platform. 
Patrick is a rounded leader and has led our professional services for more than 15 years, leading a variety of complex, interlinked teams across all sectors. He has strong commercial experience ensuring fast but stable growth while maintaining high client satisfaction. Patrick has a proven track record with designing, integrating and restructuring teams for growth in line with various target operating models.
Nick’s role as CIO covers the development and implementation of the technology strategy for the business, including our enterprise solutions, internal systems, all our business change activities and our approach to security. Nick is also Azure Product Director, working closely with Microsoft to help our clients understand the business value of cloud transformation, holding over 25 years of experience in cloud infrastructure, service integration and management.
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.
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