a Word With Ward
We are a video podcast focused on the High Growth word of data centres. Series 1 is all about data centre entrepreneurs who have either been on the 'found, scale and exit' journey, or who are on their maiden voyage. If you have an interest in the industry, these are the people you are going to want to hear from.
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Dawn Childs
12/09/2025
Dawn Childs
Ward Hampton sits down with Dame Dawn Childs, CEO of Pure Data Centers Group, for an inspiring conversation about her journey from 23 years as an RAF engineering officer to leading a global data center platform. Dawn shares her unconventional path through Gatwick Airport's private equity turnaround, setting up Merlin Entertainments' engineering directorate across 130 global theme parks, National Grid transformation, to joining Pure four and a half years ago asking "what's a data center?" and becoming CEO three years ago. She reveals Pure's superpower: unlocking capacity in supply-constrained markets with 500MW-1GW+ pipeline across Europe, Gulf, and Asia, becoming the first European operator to successfully open a Gulf data center. Dawn discusses critical community engagement including their Brent Cross campus with one of the world's largest living walls absorbing pollution equivalent to hundreds of thousands of cars, building Europe's largest biochar facility for genuine carbon sequestration, and the industry's most critical blind spot: stopping overheated announcements without delivery reality, demystifying data centers, eliminating experience barriers blocking talent transition, and coming together non-competitively to collectively solve the power, sustainability, and sovereign AI paradoxes
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Laurance Lewis
12/04/2025
Laurance Lewis
Ward Hampton sits down with Laurence Lewis, Senior Vice President and Global Commercial Officer at NTT Global Data Centers, for a conversation about his journey from attorney to global data center leader and NTT's worldwide expansion. Laurence shares his path through telecom infrastructure, private equity, Microsoft (running Americas site selection and Azure Edge Zones), IO Digital Partners, to now leading NTT's build-to-suit program and hyperscale strategy across 160+ data centers in 21 countries. He discusses NTT's unique position as the only major non-American global platform (making them attractive amid geopolitical dynamics, especially with Chinese hyperscalers), their $1 billion Singapore REIT IPO to recycle capital, opportunistic Latin America expansion plans, renewable power strategies including dairy renewable natural gas for carbon neutrality by 2030, and the industry's most shocking blind spot: Chinese hyperscalers building at half US costs and delivering in under 12 months - a competitive threat forcing global adaptation
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Giles Proctor
11/26/2025
Giles Proctor
Ward Hampton sits down with Giles Proctor, Vice President of Business Development at Goodman Data Centers, for a deep dive into one of the industry's best-kept secrets. Giles shares his 25-year journey from stumbling into data centers with startup Pihana Pacific (which became Equinix Asia's core), through Equinix operations and construction, building PacNet's business, creating Amazon's global leasing team, establishing Vantage Asia, to now leading Goodman's global business development. He reveals how Goodman has quietly delivered 800MW over 20 years, their 5-gigawatt power bank across 13 metros on four continents, evolution from powered shells to turnkey delivery, and tackles the industry's critical blind spot: unprecedented construction scale colliding with dramatically increasing complexity as liquid cooling and 800-volt DC distribution require far more skilled people than the industry has prepared for
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Tom Traugott
11/05/2025
Tom Traugott
Ward Hampton speaks with Tom Traugott, SVP of Emerging Technologies at EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure, about his journey from commercial real estate and carrier hotels to leading strategy for large-scale AI data-centre platforms. They discuss the industry’s shift toward gigawatt-scale AI campuses, the growing importance of power partnerships, liquid cooling, and sustainability, and how developers are rethinking scale, capital, and execution to meet the rising demands of the AI era.
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Luke Kipfer
10/28/2025
Luke Kipfer
Ward Hampton sits down with Luke Kipfer, Managing Director of Development and Construction at PowerHouse Data Centers, for a look at one of the industry's most explosive growth stories. Luke shares his path from starting in the trades at 18 to joining PowerHouse three and a half years ago as a team of one managing 400MW, and now leading a 30-person team delivering over 6 gigawatts across the US with plans to double again in the next 12-16 months. He explains how PowerHouse leveraged parent company AREP's real estate DNA and flexible capitalization with partners like Blue Owl to rapidly scale. The conversation tackles critical challenges: utilities being inundated by speculator "junk requests," the skilled labor shortage, his admission he was wrong about onsite generation having no future, and the industry's most frustrating blind spot - the siloed, secretive nature that prevents sharing lessons learned and standardization
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JF Berche
10/21/2025
JF Berche
Ward Hampton sits down with JF Berche, Chief Commercial Officer at Green Scale, to explore his journey from basketball player to cloud infrastructure pioneer. JF recounts his early days at AWS, his decade at Amazon and Microsoft, and how those experiences shaped his return to the sell side with Green Scale — a European data center company redefining capacity and sustainability. They discuss Green Scale’s “Scale for Good” and “Green Infrastructure” pillars, their upcoming 100MW site in Northern Ireland, and how AI is transforming data center design faster than the cloud revolution did. JF shares candid insights on Europe’s regulatory challenges, short GPU lifecycles, and why the real capacity conversation needs to shift beyond 2027. A must-listen for anyone following the next wave of cloud and AI infrastructure.
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Svante Horn
10/14/2025
Svante Horn
Ward Hampton sits down with Svante Horn, co-founder of Scandinavian Data Centers (SDC), to discuss building one of the world's most circular data center platforms. Svante shares his journey from banking to data centers, explaining SDC's vision of "Data Center 3.0" - achieving near-100% heat reuse through district heating networks, using reserve power to stabilize grids, and deploying waste heat for greenhouse food production. He discusses securing their former WWII military facility, partnering with Balder for long-term growth, and why the industry needs to prioritize energy reuse over PUE metrics as data center power demands are projected to triple by 2030.
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Diarmid Massey
10/07/2025
Diarmid Massey
Ward Hampton talks with Diarmid Massey, CEO of ESR’s data center business, about his journey from rural England to leading data center expansion across Asia-Pacific. Diarmid shares how ESR is rapidly scaling in Japan, Korea, Australia, and India, leveraging local expertise and logistics roots. They discuss Asia’s massive growth potential, industry challenges around ESG and diversity, and the future of AI-driven infrastructure. A sharp look at the forces shaping Asia’s data center boom.
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Tim Hughes
08/27/2025
Tim Hughes
Ward Hampton interviews Tim Hughes from Stack Infrastructure about his unconventional journey from Target overnight shifts and punk rock bands to leading development at one of the data center industry's fastest-growing companies, discussing Stack's hiring philosophy, the "vaporware" problem plaguing the industry, and why human capital matters more than financial capital in project execution.
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Oliver Schiebel
08/07/2025
Oliver Schiebel
Oliver Schiebel is the CEO of hscale, a newly launched European data center platform backed by Bain Capital. Oliver is a 20+ year veteran of the telecommunications and data center industry who previously built the data center business for German utility Mainova, which recently saw a partial sale to BlackRock, and held senior roles at various data center providers including helping build Interxion's Frankfurt campus. In this episode, Oliver discusses hscale's ambitious European expansion strategy, launching with a gigawatt of development pipeline across Oslo, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid, Frankfurt, and London. He covers the challenges facing hyperscale customers in sourcing capacity, the industry's shift to liquid cooling, hscale's hybrid cooling approach, and their renewable energy partnerships including solar-powered campuses in Spain. Oliver also highlights the often-overlooked issue of cybersecurity in the data center industry.
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Bill Barney
08/12/2024
Bill Barney
Bill Barney, chairman of Asian Century Equity and co -founder and chairman of Modularity, a startup providing American -built modular edge data centers and modular cable landing station solutions, crossed fast -growing emerging markets. Bill previously founded and operated as CEO Asian Edge Data Center business, Turbidac, which he sold in 2023. Bill has an impressive non -executive director portfolio career advising PE investors such as EQT and Helios on their data center investments, as well as serving on a number of data center boards. Prior to this, he had an incredibly successful 25 -year executive career in Asia as CEO for Global Cloud Exchange, Relight Communications, and PacNet, and earlier senior roles at MCI Worldcon and Orange, just to name a few.
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Randy Brouckman
07/20/2024
Randy Brouckman
Randy Brauchman is the co-founder and CEO of EdgeConnex, leveraging over 30 years of experience in telecoms, software and data centres. Under his leadership, EdgeConnex has become a leading provider of innovative data centre solutions and was recognised as a top workplace of the year for two consecutive years. Before EdgeConnex, Randy was a partner and entrepreneur in residence at TDF Ventures and held key roles such as CTO, COO and CEO at companies including BSG Clearing Solutions and Iridium. His career began at Bellcore, where he advanced to Executive Director of Network Operations Systems and led Nextel Ventures division.
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Daniel Efrati
06/04/2024
Daniel Efrati
Daniel Efrati, CEO and co-founder of the NED Data Centers, which is creating the future of digital infrastructure in the Middle East. Daniel is a chartered accountant and former investment banking executive with experience in executing equity and debt placements and M&A transactions globally. Prior to founding Ned, he had been involved in over $250 million of data center M&A and financing deals.
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David Bloom
05/01/2024
David Bloom
David Bloom, founder and chairman of Kao Data. David has a wide ranging background with over 17 years experience in the TMT industry. As an investor, founder, and investment manager. He has personally overseen the deployment of more than 500 million pounds of equity investment. Having founded K.O. in 2014, David served as board member and in September 2023 became the company's chairman. A serial founder, David founded IP Vision in 2007, Goldacre in 2012 and Net Data Centres, an Israeli-based owner-operator for the Middle Eastern data centre market in 2022. David also has a keen interest in education, having been a youth director and school gubbin.
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Darren Webb
05/01/2024
Darren Webb
In this episode we are joined by Darren Webb Co-founder and CEO of Evolution Data Centers. A developer and operator of Colo and Build to Suit Data Centers, which is headquartered in Singapore and focused entirely on challenging emerging markets in Southeast Asia. Starting out at the telco industry in the UK over 25 years ago, Darren has worked in all aspects of the digital infrastructure ecosystem and has been in Asia for over 12 years. Before starting Evolution, he was the MD for Asia for IO data centers, where he led the Singapore business, ultimately to a cashflow positive exit a few years back.
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Guy Willner
02/21/2024
Guy Willner
In this episode we are joined by Guy Willner. Guy is a world renowned data centre entrepreneur, having founded and invested in a number of data centre start-ups over the last 25 years. An industry Pioneer, Guy founded IX Europe in 1998 and grew it to a portfolio of 14 facilities across four countries. The business was purchased by Equinix in 2007 for $555 million USD. Over the next decade he founded Accelerate and held non-exec board positions with the likes of Teraco and Lambda Hellix, both of which have since been aquired by Digital Realty. In 2018, Guy co-founded IX-Africa, a hyperscale data centre operator in Kenya that is projected to be the largest hyperscale campus in East Africa by 2025. Last year, in 2023, Guy joined the board of Elea Digital in Brazil and became an operating partner with Helios Investment Partners, who aquired a majority stake in IX Africa.
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