LDC Top 50 2024
Carl Henriksen
Founder and CEO
OryxAlign
As Namibia’s top-ranking squash player, Carl Henriksen first arrived in the UK in 1996 to compete in the British Open. Following that, he secured a work visa and spent the next 10 years working for an IT services organisation before boldly launching OryxAlign.
“I felt client experience needed to be revolutionised with a more personalised service,” he says. OryxAlign designs, delivers and manages critical IT services for clients ranging from Landsec to Ella’s Kitchen. Henriksen employs 110 staff; a quarter are from ethnic minorities and half of the senior leadership team are female. “I’m a big advocate of diversity and inclusion.”
I felt client experience needed to be revolutionised with a more personalised service.”
Q&A
How do you motivate your team?
With a skills shortage in the tech sector, employee retention is vital. We focus deeply on the employee experience, mapping out career pathways and we always try to fill roles from the bottom up. We’re a medium-sized business with corporate-level employee benefits, including generous pension contributions and private healthcare, and everyone gets a Udemy subscription with access to thousands of training courses. We’re super social and I feel that that gives us a competitive advantage; clients love working with us!
What’s your sustainability strategy?
I have an enormous issue with deforestation. Through our partnership with Ecologi, we plant thousands of trees to support reforestation. We’ve always done our bit for the environment but now we’ve formalised that in the publication of our first annual ESG report and have started our journey to becoming B Corp certified within the next 12 months.
What do you do outside of work to relax?
I find cooking (on fire!) very therapeutic and rewarding. Give me an onion to slice or garlic to chop after a tough day at work, and I’ll unwind. I get so much joy from serving people and recently catered for 200 at our local village fair. If I wasn’t running OryxAlign, I’d buy a couple of warehouses and convert them into street food pop-ups with live music.
