People

VIRTUS has consistently led the way in bringing innovation to the industry and continues with its innovation roadmap, enabling customers to stay ahead of the curve in their own ventures.

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

With over 35 years of experience in the data centre, technology and banking industries, building successful, high growth, profitable businesses with a reputation for quality, innovation and customer service, Neil joined VIRTUS Data Centres as CEO in April 2013. Since 2013, Neil has grown VIRTUS from one data centre of 3MW to now being the number one London data centre provider. VIRTUS now operates 11 of London’s leading facilities providing over 178MW of capacity. His leadership has transformed VIRTUS into one of the most innovative and fastest growing data centre providers in Europe with customers including leading global organisations in the financial services, technology, media and education sectors. He is responsible for overall leadership, growth and development of VIRTUS.

Previously, Neil worked across UK, Europe, Asia and the U.S for companies such as BNP Paribas, IBM and Fiserv and was previously with Savvis (a leading global supplier of cloud and data centre service and a division of CenturyLink Inc), for 6 years, where he was Managing Director of the EMEA Region and the global financial services sector. He holds an honours degree in Business Studies from the University of Westminster and is a graduate of the Henley Business School Advanced Management Programme.

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER

Daryl is one of the co-founders of VIRTUS Data Centres, a business that has grown from a standing start in 2008 into a leading European colocation provider today. As CFO, Daryl has grown the business from its initial 4MW facility, to now being the number one London data centre provider, with c180MW of live facilities in London and, more recently, marking VIRTUS’ first expansion into mainland Europe, plans to build two mega campuses in Berlin.

His leadership of the Finance Team has seen several key milestones across both equity and debt capital raising including the most recent acquisition in December 2022, seeing Macquarie Asset Management take a 40 percent stake to become a significant minority shareholder in VIRTUS alongside majority owner STT GDC.

Daryl started his career in JP Morgan where he gained his CFA qualification, then moved into Private Equity, working for 3i Plc, and then HBOS before working in a property development company. His 25 years of experience, including 15 in the data centre sector, spans a wide spectrum of investment, fund-raising and management across multiple geographies and sectors.

CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER

Darren began his career as a graduate Military Officer in the RAF before moving into the commercial sector. He brings over 20 years experience in telecommunications and managed services gained at BT, MFS Worldcom, Level3 Communications, Attenda and COLT. He joins the VIRTUS team from euNetworks where he was Head of Sales for the UK, leading market changing deals with a number of large financial institutions and media agencies, and growing the company's expertise in low latency trading. Darren is responsible for sales, service management and strategic account management of all VIRTUS customers. 

Additionally, he sits on the board of a one of the industry's most innovative Mobile Media Advertising companies, Odyssey Mobile Interaction and is interested in all new developments in this sector. Darren has an honours degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from University of Wales, College Swansea.

SVP MARKETING

Venessa Wilson, VIRTUS' SVP Marketing has worked in marketing within the IT industry for over 20 years.  Her experience includes working within a wide variety of corporates including Equinix, HP, IBM, Cisco and 3Com, and for 7 years as the Client Services Director of a specialist IT Marketing agency, working for clients including some of the world's largest companies. Venessa has extensive experience of working within new and emerging markets, most recently being based in the Middle East, and within IT start-up environments.

SVP COMMERCIAL & REGULATORY AFFAIRS

Helen has more than 30 years’ experience in property development in both Asia and Europe. Her main area of expertise is in property acquisition, management and development of data centre sites. Helen has been involved in all VIRTUS' site acquisitions to date (both leasehold and freehold) including legal negotiations, overseeing technical due diligence, securing power including PPAs, negotiating connectivity agreements and working with local authorities on planning applications and permitting. She is also involved with key customer contract negotiations and heads up the company’s compliance function which includes ESG. Helen chairs VIRTUS’ sustainability steering committee.

SVP TECHNICAL OPERATIONS

Dominic is responsible for all aspects of Technical Operations and Customer Service for VIRTUS and its data centres. With over 25 years of experience in leading IT operations in the data centre and technology industries, Dominic has a proven track record for building and leading highly successful support organisations with an inherent passion for excellence, quality and customer service. Previously, Dominic was a Senior Director leading Data Centre Operations at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). He was instrumental in the OCI Site implementations and led the Data Centre Global Operations Organisation, with 30 availability domains and over 300 staff in 15 countries.

SVP PEOPLE & ORGANISATION

Anna is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, Executive Coach and Agile HR Practitioner. VIRTUS has been working with Anna as a consultant for the last 18 months, and she brings with her 20+ years of human resources and leadership development experience across brands such as McCann Erickson, ASOS.com, GoCardless, Time Out, The New York Times, Grayling Communications, BBC Studios, ISG and Lotus Cars.  She has also worked as an HR Consultant with one of the country's leading employment law firms, working mainly in the tech and creative sectors.

SVP, DESIGN AND BUILD

Mike has recently joined VIRTUS to lead Design and Construction activities in EMEA.

Mike joins the VIRTUS management team bringing over 30 years’ experience in the wider construction industry and 20 years of specific Data Centre Design and Delivery expertise delivering over 750MW of capacity for lease providers and self-build programs of work during this time.  Mike is a strong advocate of construction safety, scheduling predictability, sustainability & quality and brings deep experience of end-to-end data centre delivery in established and new geo expansions in EMEA.

Previously, Mike worked across UK and Europe for companies such as Digital Realty, Cundall and Arup operating in both design and construction lead roles.  Mike’s previous role was Construction Leader for Microsoft in EMEA where, for 6 years, he led the team to expand footprint in both established and multiple new region Geos, delivering capacity to drive Hyper Scale cloud business growth.

He is a Chartered Electrical Engineer and holds an 1^st class honours degree in Electrical and Power Engineering as well as being a power systems SME and Uptime certified designer.

MANAGING DIRECTOR, GERMANY

Michael joined VIRTUS in 2024 as Managing Director for Germany. He is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the business in Germany, including expansions, sales, data centre design, construction and operations.

Before joining VIRTUS, Michael spent over a decade at CBRE, where he sucessfully established and expanded the organisations data centre consultancy services in Germany. 

He holds a Master's degree in Geography from the University of Münster and an MBA from the University of Applied Sciences in Bibernach.

VICE PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, EMEA

Christina joined VIRTUS as VP Business Development EMEA in June 2022 with over ten years’ experience in developing strategies for, and expanding, existing and new hyperscale infrastructure geographies across EMEA.

For the past decade, she has worked for Amazon in EMEA, where she expanded the existing AWS data centre regions in colocation and self-built facilities, as well as launched new region geographies as the country manager. In her previous role as Data Center Divestiture Principal at Amazon Web Services in EMEA, Christina worked alongside large strategic hyperscale cloud customers, advising them on their infrastructure assets and developing new models to facilitate and enhance their cloud migration journey.

GENERAL COUNSEL

James joined in July 2023 as General Counsel, where he leads the legal function supporting all VIRTUS business operations

James is in his second career after starting is first in the military over 25 years ago, where he enjoyed over seven years as an army officer, specialising in logistics. After some time back in full-time education, his legal career has since taken him from private practice as a real estate lawyer with Osborne Clarke, Wragge & Co and Taylor Wessing to generalist in-house roles with Wildstone Capital and EY before entering the data centre space with Global Switch, where he spent three and a half years as their European legal counsel. 

To find out more about our Board of Directors, please click here