Keri Gilder, CEO of Colt Technology Services, on how AI will shape the future of work

In this episode of Leading with Purpose, Keri Gilder, CEO of Colt Technology Services, discusses her journey to leadership, the importance of connectivity, and the role of AI in shaping the future of work. She emphasises the need for digital inclusion, gender balance in tech, and the economic impact of digital skills. Gilder also addresses the infrastructure challenges for AI implementation and the importance of sustainability in the tech industry. The conversation concludes with advice for the next generation looking to enter the tech field.

Transcript

Rt Hon Justine Greening (00:00.802)

Welcome to this week's Leading with Purpose podcast. We're really honored today to have Keri Gilder, who's CEO of Colt Technology Services. She's really a huge pioneer, not just on gender, as I think the first female CEO of a UK telecom company, but really passionate about AI and digital inclusion and also environment. I'm sure we'll cover all of those areas through the course of this podcast. She's also got a brilliant LinkedIn.

Keri Gilder (00:18.195)

you

Rt Hon Justine Greening (00:29.646)

blog called What's on my Mind, so definitely get subscribed to that as well. Keri, brilliant to have you here. Thanks for being on the podcast today. Perhaps start off by telling us a little bit about Colt, but also your journey to end up being its CEO.

Keri Gilder (00:45.913)

So Colt is a global company. We provide connectivity services, both voice and data, to companies all over the world. We are B2B only. So we don't do consumer, we don't do mobile, we do fixed connectivity services. And basically what I always think about when I think about Colt is that we're connecting the world. We have subsea

cables, we have pan-European cables, have cables and fibers in Asia. And so that's one of the reasons why I came to Colt was because of this global connectivity and this purpose that I had of making connections and making sure that I was enabling those connections, not just in my own personal life and in my company, but actually around the world through our communication services. So that's what that's who Colt is from.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (01:26.211)

Mmm.

Keri Gilder (01:42.099)

Go ahead. I was just going to say from a career perspective and how I ended up at Colt was kind of a roundabout way. I did a bike ride is how I like to say that I got here. I was working at a company called Ciena which is a optical vendor that helps service providers like Colt build the networks that we enable these connections around the world.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (01:42.796)

No, no, go ahead, Keri, sorry.

Keri Gilder (02:11.324)

the, my customer was Colt and they asked me to go on their annual bike ride, which was a charity bike ride. And over the course of the last few years, we've raised over a million pounds in order to support charities around the world. And through that bike ride, I actually learned the culture of Colt. And what I found was it was an extreme culture of care is how I'd like to say it. And I hadn't felt that

caring culture in any other company that I'd ever worked in. And it just pulled on my heartstrings, I guess you could say. And I always wanted to be a part of the Colt culture after that bike ride. And about six months later, I became the Chief Commercial Officer at Colt. About a year and a half later, I became the CEO.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (02:59.47)

And it's clear that, you know, that issue of people and caring and connectivity is obviously a big part of what really drives you and it was fascinating reading your last blog post about sort of finding your purpose, you know, why are you on this earth, you what are you here to do? And I think that comes across very, very clearly for you that it's really what you care about, the people side of things and connecting them.

Keri Gilder (03:26.798)

It really is. I truly believe that there is a primal need and I think with social media and what it provides and what it doesn't provide, this is more obvious than ever, especially in the younger generations, that there is an element of connectivity and community and connection that is created through the digital world and I'm glad that we're able to do that, but at the same time...

those physical connections, those human connections are very critical. And I think post-COVID, we started seeing that more than ever, that when our teams came together, we were able to create that feeling of community that maybe didn't exist outside of the workplace because of whatever reason, COVID or whatever was going on.

I think it is that. It's this connection to the digital to create that connection, but it's also this human connection that needs to be intrinsically aligned to that digital environment.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (04:34.562)

Yeah. And it's so interesting, isn't it? Because a lot of the focus today is almost about how some of those connections can end up with bad outcomes. But actually the point you're making is overwhelmingly they can help good outcomes. And I think it's interesting from my perspective, because your route obviously was engineering and we're in this AI shift. And I've always felt that if people talk about AI separately, but one of the things that you're very focused on is digital inclusion. And I think what it underlines is that

tech and talent basically go together. You can't kind of pull them apart actually. just interested in your sense as an engineer around how that AI shift, how you see it starting to feed into socioeconomic outcomes and some of the opportunities.

Keri Gilder (05:23.634)

There's a striking statistic that's out there. Some of the research actually states that 71 % of AI skilled workers are men and only 29 % are women. And we're starting to look in to what is driving this disparity. How can we tackle and create more gender balance in AI roles and how can that be enabled? Interestingly enough, if you look at other statistics, what you'll see is that in the next 10 years,

they believe the primary user of AI will be women. And I think it's because there's an artifact of productivity that is associated with AI and women will find ways to be more productive so that they can balance their work life and their home life and also be more productive in their home life. I see, even I use AI to look up a recipe or to find...

Rt Hon Justine Greening (06:18.616)

Yep.

Keri Gilder (06:19.504)

You know, to find different ways to write a letter or look at, you know, a trust versus a will in these types of things. And so I think there's a lot of elements, whether you're a working parent or a non-working parent where AI is going to come into the mix. I think what you have to consider, and this is the engineer in me, why is there a disparity in AI skilled workers in particular? But also I think you have to look at the AI data.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (06:49.506)

Mm-hmm.

Keri Gilder (06:49.638)

to see where bias exists as well. And one of the things that I learned from a couple of my friends that have gone through the Oxford, Cambridge, and the MIT AI programs was that the problem is not necessarily the development of AI by mostly male individuals. It is actually because the data doesn't exist in the world around women.

around 25%, I think it's maybe a little bit higher than that, but not much. That's the 25 % of the data in the world that's on the internet is about women and that's it. It's a very, very low percentage. And so if you think about AI and the way AI learns, AI learns with data. If the data doesn't exist around women or around, you know, the...

Rt Hon Justine Greening (07:30.84)

Mm-hmm.

Keri Gilder (07:47.377)

the underprivileged community, then you're already starting at a disadvantage. So I think the first thing that you have to look at with AI is number one, how can you upskill women to be actually creating more data in the environment so that the bias starts to go away? But I think that's also, again, back to the human side.

We also have to do things within our communities to enable women to be more successful in actually being in those roles, creating the data, doing the great things in order to enable that drive forward.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (08:26.712)

Yeah.

a new really championed STEM for girls in schools. And I know that's been a big focus for you. I think the other area that's really interesting to talk about is age. And this says that we're in a transition and obviously for young people, this is an AI age that they're very familiar with. They're literally growing up with it. But I think for many of the rest of us, it feels like perhaps it's something happening to someone else and yet it's going to touch all of our lives, but.

Keri Gilder (08:41.447)

Yeah.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (08:58.284)

I think this is where the digital inclusion challenge comes in, whether it's almost in your wider life, but also I guess, I guess in your career as well, you know, if most companies are heading down a tech route one way or another and you don't feel tech enabled, then that's going to make you feel less confident about being able to progress. And I guess at Colt is that something that you particularly focused on and also as an industry leader.

Keri Gilder (09:23.664)

It is. I think there's an economic aspect to this as well that I think countries actually have to consider and that's that basic digital skills are actually forecast to compromise countries like the UK's biggest gap by 2030. According to a couple of reports by the House of Lords and the digital community,

What they've actually stated is the UK digital skills shortage is reaching over 27 billion pounds by 2030. And if that's the case, then, you know, this is not just an area that we have to look at to ensure that we're driving diversity, equity, inclusion, but that we're also actually driving our economies forward. And we're very, very aware of that. So there are programs, you stated that digital inclusion is

is top of mind for Colt It's actually our only charitable initiative globally because we believe it is absolutely so important to our people, but also to the communities that we serve. So it's a big focus for us. It's also a big focus for us because what we've also found is that without, like you said, we work with Age UK, for example,

because the elderly, they get lonely and they don't feel included if they're not participating in the digital world. So we've done really interesting things like actually driving charitable concerts where we provided the environment around the concert to amplify that in a virtual environment so that more people can participate in that, especially those that are more senior.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (10:46.35)

Mm-hmm.

Keri Gilder (11:15.314)

and they can again build that sense of community. And so there's small things that we do, there's big things that we do in order to drive this. But I think the biggest thing that we have to do is come together as an industry. And I'm working with Julie and David at Tech UK right now to start really thinking about this, but to bring a CEO group together of some of the largest tech companies in the UK.

to say, okay, how do we actually start to drive the skills gap? How do we start to drive those academies? And how can we support that in a fiscally neutral way that enables the communities to move forward and to learn about AI and to build prompting and engineering skills so that we can all participate in the digital future?

Rt Hon Justine Greening (12:06.582)

And I guess there's a geography part of this as well, isn't there, around the fact that whenever you have these big economic structural changes, know, there's opportunities and there's threats, but the opportunity really, I guess, you know, investment in different communities, new communities, and some brand new opportunities and roles that will be there that just simply weren't 10 years ago. Equally, actually, tech business very centred around London and the Southeast, so...

I guess a challenge from that growth, and I know that you were involved in a white paper on how AI can really drive growth, but that geography piece of it as well, Keri, how do you see squaring that circle? Because I think there's an instinct to obviously invest probably where the talent is and yet actually what you're saying is right, which is we need to develop talent more broadly. And so that is going to mean priming it in some communities where perhaps fewer people have had roles in tech before.

Keri Gilder (13:06.854)

think the beautiful thing about tech right now is that anybody can participate in it. You don't necessarily need a degree in engineering, whereas maybe in the past when I was growing up you needed to be a management information systems major or a computer science major. You don't need that anymore. The technology has been enabled in such a way that anybody can participate.

And you're exactly right. mean, we did an AI paper and talked about this and EY and Liberty Global also did a paper on this. And what they actually said is that we believe AI could actually support an additional 10 million jobs in the UK, which would add 320 billion pounds annually to the UK economy. So the opportunity is out there. The countries are willing to, I mean, the companies are willing to invest.

in the programs to enable that development. And it doesn't have to be in London. It can be in Northern England. It can be in Scotland. It can be in Wales. It doesn't matter where it is because in this day and age data can live anywhere. The workflows that are happening by companies don't have to have a geographic presence in one area or the other. And everybody can be enabled if they have a laptop at their house.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (14:28.8)

And so the 10 million jobs you talked about, mean, that's an astonishing number. Give us a sense of what kind of roles these are, maybe the variety of them, so that people sort of have a sense of how they might be in one of these in the future with their children.

Keri Gilder (14:28.804)

And so I think this is the key.

Keri Gilder (14:45.714)

Yeah, think there's a, you know, the couple that come to mind right now are, you know, one is creative in the marketing space and there's a lot of opportunities that we're seeing. You know, we've actually looked at AI as our primary creator of two things, you know, how do we actually build content and how do we actually look at building our sales pipeline?

And the content creation, again, you don't have to be a computer scientist. You can be a creative. You can be an artist. And as long as you understand how to actually interact and build the prompting for AI to start building the environments that support your brand.

you can participate in that. that's just one example on the marketing side. There's also support roles that I think are going to start to prop up where, again, you don't necessarily have to be a network engineer. You just have to be able to understand AI prompting and that language capacity of the machine to ask the right questions to enable the right support scenario for a customer.

So I think, you know, that's a support role. There's a marketing role. Now we're building an AI team within Colt. We've just hired our first chief AI architect. And, you know, there's DevOps, there's AI DevOps teams, there's AI support teams, there's even AI governance teams. So if you're thinking about

the business side and how you have contract control, how you start looking at making sure that you have regulatory compliance. AI can be a absolute helper in all of those environments. And again, you don't have to be a lawyer necessarily to be able to provide the necessary prompting to enable the outcomes that the legal department or the company needs. Just a couple of examples.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (16:57.184)

It's so, mean, what's interesting, first of all, is this fusion of creative and tech that I think, you know, we'll see much, much more of, because essentially, in a way, people might have seen being in tech as coding and all sorts of stuff. And there's still obviously a lot of roles around that. But actually the real impact of AI is it opens it out.

to be much more tilted towards what are you trying to create and how different is that going to be? And I think that's what's particularly interesting about all of this. So you're going to end up with loads more people in tech jobs who, you know, probably never expected to be there. But I think it's fascinating that, you know, you're bringing the leaders together in the sector. Why do you see the main challenges in terms of getting to those opportunities and unlocking it? Because

Keri Gilder (17:19.314)

does.

Keri Gilder (17:41.988)

Thank you.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (17:47.714)

You know, if we can, it's transformational, but equally, often you can just see these opportunities sliding away over time. What's gonna, what do we need to all think about in terms of the challenges that we'll have to address?

Keri Gilder (18:02.416)

I think one is more business oriented and the other one is more, I would say, community oriented. The one on the business orientation is AI will not come into Europe or the UK in any sort of mass way unless we really think about the infrastructure that's required to support it. So when we think about that, it's not just jobs in the AI software space.

It's actually creating construction roles for building data centers. It's actually building fiber pullers that actually can pull the fiber. And most importantly, it's looking at energy and where that's coming from and whether we can actually attract, build what I call AI zones in different parts of the world that have the three massive components that you need. The first one is cheap power.

and available power. The second one is the construction skills to actually build the data centers. And the third one is enabling the connectivity to those sites. So I think one of them is the infrastructure piece of it and the regulatory environment needs to change to some extent in order to support that. I think the UK has a unique opportunity to actually

Rt Hon Justine Greening (19:01.601)

Mm-hmm.

Keri Gilder (19:28.89)

be different than what the EU is doing in this space because maybe one advantage of Brexit is that they don't have to follow the same rules. I think we're already starting to see some relaxing in these AI zones around planning and that needs to happen because we have to move at the pace of change and that's very, very fast right now. And so that's the infrastructure piece. Then if you think about the community piece,

It is this element of bringing together the companies and the government and organisations like Tech UK, organisations like The Purpose Coalition to make sure that we're actually, number one, finding those workers, those people that are out there that want to work and want to participate but for whatever reason haven't been able to. So it's finding that community.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (20:16.312)

Mm-hmm.

Keri Gilder (20:27.204)

Then it's enabling that community through the training programs of the collective. And then it's, you know, it's third, making sure that we're monitoring that progress and we're continuing to invest in those academies, in those people and keeping them within the UK as well. So we're creating the compensation programs in order to make being in the UK and staying in the UK attractive. So I think it's, you know, again, there's kind of a three-leg stool over here.

energy data centers and fiber. There's kind of a three-leg stool over here, which is, you know, making sure that the businesses, the government, and then the nonprofit organisations are working together as one voice rather than independently to come up with that plan and profile of what ultimately needs to be rolled out.

in order to drive the the skills capability within the region.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (21:27.744)

It's, mean, it's, it's, it's right. actually Essentially it's about creating a strategic talent pipeline. And, you know, most businesses would, well, you talked about the other half of it would obsess over supply chain, you know, how are we going to get the infrastructure in place? But actually I think one of the things that hasn't happened traditionally is companies haven't really seen talent in the same light. and, you know, if you were a coffee manufacturer and

The question was where are gonna get your beans from? you're like, oh, don't worry. There's always some around. You you get out of business quite quickly. You certainly wouldn't get any investors, but that is often the route that companies have taken with talent. And I think it takes a bit of industry leadership, doesn't it, Keri, to bring people together to say, right, we actually do need to work on a collective supply chain for talent.

And if we can tilt that and that's why it's so fantastic, the part of the purpose coalition, if we can tilt that to make sure it's, developing talent in communities that really disproportionately can have an impact from those new roles, then you get this double win that isn't just you accessing talent, but it's more diverse, but it's also communities that really are getting access to opportunities. And as you say, what's interesting about the tech industry is that those opportunities can

perhaps more easily put into different communities than for other more legacy sectors, I can, if I call it that. So it is brilliant, brilliant leadership to be pushing ahead on this. And I guess the other piece of it really that I did just want to touch on is environment, because that infrastructure piece really starts to show how all of these different people and planet challenges come kind of.

you know, not crashing together, but they all join ultimately. They're inextricably linked. And I think this sense of, you know, the sustainability agenda and how that intersects with AI, I think is something that is just really starting to come onto the radar a lot more. But you've talked about this for a long time, Keri. How do you see making sure sustainability is, is kind of still majored on and it doesn't end up becoming a

Keri Gilder (23:30.994)

Yeah.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (23:41.014)

a problem if you like for the AI progress that we want to see as well.

Keri Gilder (23:46.567)

Yeah, I think this is where, again, I think the UK in particular has a major opportunity because we have to look at power sources. We have to look at a new way of deploying, you know, the grid and enabling the grid for both business and for society. And I think that if you look at the power requirements for AI over the next three years, they are projected to more than double.

So just to put that in perspective, if you put a diagram in place, again, engineer coming out in me, what you would actually see is that right now, the tech industry with cloud and with AI utilizes about 65 gigawatts of power across the entire globe. With the projections of AI, we're actually expected to increase that to 298 gigawatts.

over the next three years. Now that's fivefold increase is what is expected. On the low end of that, it's 117 gigawatts, which is still a 19 % compounded annual growth rate. So I think if you just take that one statistic and say, okay, number one, there's more power needed in order to build these large language models and these small language models in AI.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (24:45.502)

five foldings pretty much.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (24:57.027)

Yeah.

Keri Gilder (25:13.158)

That's, you know, the demand is going to be there. The second thing is how does the UK, how can the UK differentiate itself? And I think the one way it can is in sustainable power. I think if we look at our ingenuity, our innovation, we have a DNA within the UK that is unbelievable from, you know, from enabling twins. I mean,

DNA, like it's unbelievable what the UK has done. And I know this based upon my British citizenship test. I think we can do this again. And I think it's an imperative because I think over time, once these climate events continue to happen, we're seeing it again in the US right now with wildfires and floods and, you know,

people being severely injured or dying because of severe weather and we're just going to see more and more of that. As that starts impacting communities, I think people will start getting very serious about what we're doing about this and how it, because it will impact them personally. Until it impacts them personally, I'm not sure that, you know, where people are on the belief system of whether climate change is

you know, is that big of a deal. And especially if you go further west, I think that's definitely the case. I think in Europe, because of the floods, because of this fair weather, because of what we've seen, we probably sense it more than other parts of the world. But as that happens, and it will happen over the next 10 years, I think the countries that...

participate in a sustainable way and have those sustainable measures around energy in particular are going to be the ones that are sought after for placement of technology investment, for placement of building community support around these types of programs and ultimately driving the economies. So I feel very adamant that we have to look at this

Keri Gilder (27:29.892)

in a sustainable way. Colta has been doing this for a while. We're on our third year of an EcoVadis Platinum rating. We're the only telecom in the industry that actually has that rating. And it's because we see this major connection, once again, between our planet and our portfolio. And we need to make sure that we're part of the solution and not part of the problem as this AI

Rt Hon Justine Greening (27:42.2)

coverage.

Keri Gilder (27:57.619)

development, you know, grows throughout the world.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (28:01.376)

And so in a sense, is you look ahead to these next big milestones coming down the track and there's almost two, guess. One is around solving this AI sustainability challenge. And as you say, being seen to make it part of the solution, not the problem. And the second is almost solving the social mobility challenge, showing that AI creating new jobs is making new jobs and opportunities for people who really can transform their lives.

on the back of them and it's almost this twin challenge that, you know, leaders in the sector need to really focus on addressing. But if you can, then yes, what an achievement that might be.

Keri Gilder (28:42.866)

then I think you have the winning ticket for the future economy of the world, to be completely honest. It's an interesting thing because I'm on the Change the Face board. And within Change the Face, we did a neurodiversity study last year. And we engaged with a lot of our employees and people to figure out.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (28:50.467)

Yeah.

Keri Gilder (29:09.446)

this connection between neurodiversity and AI. And what we actually found out is that is one particular area of the community where AI can help exponentially. And we had the likes of Microsoft talking about the use of Co-Pilot and how actually it was helping autistic individuals be able to ask better questions to their bosses.

And so therefore they were having better impact in the team meetings because they were more in tune emotionally with AI to understand the right way to answer, ask a question and therefore gaining confidence. So I think it's, it's not just the enablement of, of, employment and creating skills, but it's also the enablement of exactly what you said.

maybe a different workforce than what we would traditionally look at with tech and enabling these communities to come forward that maybe didn't have the confidence or the capability and now they actually do. And that's where I'm really excited about AI.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (30:22.318)

And it's, as we just talked about and you're passionate about, those connections, isn't it? The fact that you are reaching some new networks for the first time and it is exciting to look ahead. You know, so many opportunities for so many different kinds of people. And if you were, you know, with all of your experience, you know, being in a sector as it's completely transforming itself, what advice would you give to someone who's maybe listened to this and thought, that is just amazing. You know, I'd like to be on.

I'd like to be part of that. It's gonna transform the world. What advice would you give them? Perhaps if they're someone at school or college and they're thinking, yeah, that's for me.

Keri Gilder (31:03.026)

I would say there's no one that can't participate in this world. There's no one. So if this sounds exciting to you, then reach out to your local government, reach out to community involvement centers, reach out to even companies like us. Reach out to us on LinkedIn.

tons of employee resource groups that engage with the younger generation within schools. We do a lot of training and we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening to this podcast, reach out to us on LinkedIn, reach out to your communities, reach out to companies like Tech UK and show your interest and we'll do what we can in order to bring you further into the mix of.

what this next generation environment can be.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (32:02.766)

It's been an advice, which is basically connect with the network and see where it takes you, but it'll definitely come back. So Keri Gilder, CEO of Colt Technology Services. It's just been fantastic you having you on board. It's such an exciting time. Brilliant having you part of The Purpose Coalition as well. So looking forward to the feedback on the podcast when it comes out and thanks for the time today.

Keri Gilder (32:06.3)

Connect. Exactly.

Keri Gilder (32:25.459)

Thank you.