Speakers

As co-founder and CEO, Darren’s role is to ensure that Evolution Data Centres delivers on its strategic vision to become the leading pan-Asian data centre platform, delivering digital growth, reliably and sustainably, into high growth markets (often referred to as Tier 2 markets). Evolution are actively developing projects today, across the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.Darren’s career spans the full breadth of the digital infrastructure ecosystem, including Telco, Data Centre and Artificial Intelligence. Darren was the Asia Managing Director for IO Data Centres, where he had overall leadership for a modular designed, Data Centre in Singapore. Darren led this business to net cash flow positive and ultimately to a successful exit.In his time in telco, Darren delivered significant investment programmes, with budgets of over £500m, while leading Vodafone’s strategic investments across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Part of this role included Darren establishing the Vodafone Enterprise brand in the UAE. Prior to Vodafone, Darren was MD of Cable & Wireless for Asia, in addition to running their Global Enterprise sales channel, a business delivering annualised revenue of over £240m.Along with his Evolution co-founder and team, Darren is passionate about culture in the workplace. He aspires for Evolution to be an organisation where everyone is a driver and there are no passengers.All the team are responsible for moving Evolution forward every day in the right direction, he encourages all the team to take ownership and accountability. He is often heard saying and reminding himself, to enjoy the journey, rather than being obsessed with the destination. Sustainability is a cornerstone of Darren’s approach, his goal is to drive change in the industry to deliver greener data centres (he doesn’t agree with, or like, the phrase “green data centres”). This ambition is brought to life in Evolution where every effort is made to minimise the environmental impact of every data centre project that the company develops.Darren has been in Asia for 14 years, having been brought up in the Middle East, then moving back to the UK at the age of 5. He is married and has 3 children, 2 daughters and 1 son. He has a personal commitment to improving health and sustainability: he has committed to walking home from the office daily. In addition, he refuses to take any shop offered plastic bags, so that he can help reduce the use of plastic. He has also recently made his diet vegetarian, in order to reduce his intake of meat products.