Garry Connolly is the Founder of Host in Ireland, a strategic global initiative created to increase awareness of the benefits of hosting digital assets in Ireland and Irish companies delivering international data centre projects. A self-proclaimed “stubborn digital optimist,” Garry is a much sought-after keynote speaker, panellist and moderator at global industry events. He regularly appears in conferences throughout the Globe. Garry has over 30 years’ experience in assisting Foreign Direct investment into Europe. He demonstrates a pragmatic and common sense approach to data centre site selection, sales, negotiation, company start-ups, mentoring and strategic thinking. Based on a philosophy of doing the right thing with the right people at the right time, Garry was instrumental in developing the GDPR Awareness Coalition and DCs for Bees, a Host in Ireland sub-initiative. Recognised for his leadership efforts, Garry has been named in the Broadgroup Power 200: The World’s Most Influential Data Economy Leaders of 2019, recognised as one of the top 50 EMEA Influencers in Cloud and Data Centres 2017 by Data Economy and was runner up in the 2017 DCS Awards’ ‘Data Centre Individual of Year’ category.