atNorth appoints new Chief Development Officer

atNorth, the leading pan-Nordic colocation, high performance computing and artificial intelligence service provider, has announced the appointment of Stephen Donovan to its Executive Leadership Team as Chief Development Officer. The news follows several recent additions to atNorth’s Board of Directors and other strategic hires, including the recent appointment of Ásdís Ólafsdóttir who leads the company’s ESG practice.

In his role as Chief Development Officer, Stephen Donovan will focus on site selection, design and delivery of new data center sites across the Nordics and the rest of Europe, as well as the expansion of the existing atNorth facilities in Iceland and Sweden.

“Stephen has considerable experience and knowledge of the European data center industry, particularly in building sites for hyperscale cloud and internet activity as well as other data-intensive enterprise and HPC workloads,” says Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, CEO of atNorth. “His deep technical expertise and knowledge of data center delivery will play an integral role in how atNorth continues to expand its sites across the Nordics and rest of Europe in a sympathetic and sustainable manner. Our vision is to have data center sites in every Nordic country to provide our clients with reliable, scalable high-performance compute power that draws on renewable environmental resources available to power our sites in the most sustainable and economic way possible. Stephen is the right person both professionally and personally to help us do this, and we’re excited to support the changes he will drive.”

A Chartered Engineer with 40 years in the construction industry, the last 15 specifically in the data center sector, Donovan is a technical expert with specialist knowledge of high performance and mission critical computing environments. He brings hands-on experience of designing, developing, and launching small, medium and large-scale data center facilities to market for organizations including NTT GDC, E-shelter, Interxion, IO, and Digital Realty.

“I am very excited to join the atNorth Executive Team at this pivotal time for the company’s future,” comments Donovan. “atNorth is a disruptive energy in the data center space and is poised and ready for substantial growth in its operations in a strategic, sustainable, and commercially responsible way across Europe. I’m thrilled to be a part of this journey with a company that is already ahead of the curve.”

This key appointment comes at a pivotal time in atNorth’s growth as the company has also announced the appointment of Michael Endres as their first Sales Director for the DACH region. In this role, Michael Endres will be accelerating the momentum already being achieved in the Nordics by launching atNorth and their sustainable, cost efficient data center solutions to the DACH region.