Penny Williams

Penny Williams has been managing director of CDW UK and International, the British arm of the US reseller, since October 2024, and now also holds the title of senior vice-president. She joined CDW’s predecessor Kelway in 2010, when it bought ISC Computers, and built her career on the public-sector side of the business.

Double-digit growth

CDW reports its UK and Canadian businesses together as “Other”, and in the three months to 30 June 2026 that line grew 22.9% to $826m (£618m), more than twice the 10% growth of the group as a whole. In IT Channel Oxygen’s Partner Leaders list in July, Williams said the UK business was delivering double-digit growth and named becoming AI-native, as an operating model rather than a slogan, as its goal for 2026.

The contracts CDW UK announced this year lean toward complex delivery work rather than box shifting. In June it signed a service support contract with the Ministry of Defence for AirCHAN, the information management system behind the RAF’s Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, and in July it won a place on the Government Commercial Agency’s tactical communications framework. In August CDW was named official IT services supplier to the 2027 Ryder Cup, taking prime responsibility for the event’s IT platform from design and build through to decommissioning.

Building the services team

Much of Williams’s second year has gone on people. In July 2025 she told IT Channel Oxygen that CDW would invest in its UK services business “through organic investment and acquisition”. In January 2026 she hired John Holt, who has held leadership roles at Computacenter, Daisy and Digital Space, to lead professional and managed services. In September she created a new role of vice-president for private-sector sales and appointed Sonya Mathieu from NetApp, starting in October. Williams said the role reflects “the scale of the opportunity ahead of us and our ambition for future growth.”

Why it matters to the channel

CDW is one of the few UK resellers with a US parent’s balance sheet behind it, and the combination of defense work, event infrastructure and new private-sector leadership puts it up against Computacenter, Softcat and SCC for larger, services-heavy contracts.

Williams has kept CDW UK growing at double digits, won complex defense and event contracts and brought in the leaders to build a larger services business.