Individuals embraced

Our database of interviews includes leaders from a wide variety of backgrounds who all share one thing in common:

The positive impact they have made on the development of the UK IT industry

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Sir Rod Aldridge

Sir Rod Aldridge OBE worked in local government on the south coast of England before studying in the evenings to earn his professional qualification as an accountant. He then worked for the professional body of accountants in the public sector and worked on developing guidelines for the implementation of IT systems in local authorities. From this sprang the idea of offering IT outsourcing services to the public sector. Aldridge spun the operation out of the professional body and led the development of what became Capita from one employee to 74,000. On retirement from Capita his philanthropic work includes Ada, the National College for Digital Skills to help develop the core of skilled coders in the UK

Stephen Baker

Stephen Baker was working as a clerk in a local authority in the west midlands when he saw a mainframe computer being installed. He had failed his 11+ exam, and his school educated pupils to work in the local factories but fortunately his father got him the clerks job.

He realised that computers were the future and could be a threat to his job. He eventually found a computer operator’s job in a local steel company and rose in four years to be operations manager of an ICT computer. At each job change he looked for more challenges, making his own path to become head of European MIS operations for an international toy company.

He became a senior consultant for Systems Designers before going freelance. By now he had through his own efforts mastered the growing area of the combination of computing and telecommunications. He worked for over 45 different organisations in the private and public sectors. He was deeply involved in fixing tricky Y2K issues. Stephen’s inspiring story shows how people can build their own career in IT with drive and tenacity.

David Barker

David Barker was one of the UK’s first internet entrepreneurs in 1994 and spent ten years working with global corporations including Intel, Cisco and Microsoft. David decided to exit in 2004 and became a social entrepreneur to tackle some of the issues facing society – mainly around social mobility, unemployment and poverty.

Since 2005 David has been innovating new social enterprise start-ups using Tech for Good. To increase capacity and scalability, in 2015 he founded Techcentre, The Social Innovation Agency, to work in partnership with clients to innovate new tech-enabled social enterprise start-ups.