LOCATION: Berkshire, UK
LANGUAGES SPOKEN: Albanian, Italian, Spanish and English
CURRENT ROLE: CEO, IRIS Software Group
PREVIOUS LEADERSHIP ROLES: CFO and COO, IRIS Software Group – Head of Audit Committee and NED, Purplebricks – Chief of Staff, Acision/Mavenir
BOARDWAVE ROLES: Patron, Board Member, Mentor
IRIS Software is one of the UK’s largest private equity- backed businesses and, thanks in part to its CEO Elona Mortimer-Zhika, it has a value that tops $4 billion. During her tenure, Mortimer-Zhika has steered the company through two sale processes, trebled its earnings, acquired more than 40 businesses and boasts a gender split that sits far above the industry average. She was also crowned Tech CEO of the Year by the UK Tech Awards in 2023. With so many accolades to her name, you’d think she would want to take things easy. Think again: the CEO remains focused on scalable growth. “Building the right foundation is so important. We are a £3 to £4 billion business now, and we need to get to £10 billion. You can’t do that without the right foundations,” she says.
One of Mortimer-Zhika’s main focuses at IRIS has been its cloud revenues. They were at less than 10% when she joined the company, and are now at nearly 70% – but she has the aim of hitting 80% in the near future. Expanding beyond the UK has been Mortimer-Zhika’s second key area: “We started with nothing in the Americas three years ago, and now one third of IRIS’s total business is generated in the region,” she says. “The team is more than 500 strong, we have over 6,000 customers (including 50 of the top 100 CPAs), and we pay more than one million people monthly in Canada and the US through our software and bureau services. Our revenues are already more than $175 million and we have high double-digit growth organically. All this has been achieved in three years,” Mortimer-Zhika says.
Mortimer-Zhika is determined to run the business her way. For one, she doesn’t like being referred to as a “female CEO”.“It will be a great day when we don’t see it as such a difference,” she says, explaining that it shouldn’t be a novelty to be a woman in charge. Another focus, and her personal passion for the business, is diversity. “I think many people still see DEI as box-ticking, rather than something that is genuinely good for business,” she says. “At IRIS we are doing this in a very targeted way, starting with our male/female balance.” IRIS’s workforce comprises 46% women overall, with 43% in senior positions.
Paying it forward
Recruitment and retention policies are key, as are flexible working and return schemes, she says. But Mortimer-Zhika acknowledges there is more work to do to encourage diverse candidates to apply for tech jobs. “There is a lack of diversity in the pipeline of applicants. That’s a key problem that no recruitment strategy can fix. Nobody wants to hire people just because they are the right gender or race, and nobody wants a job to fulfil a quota. We need more diverse people applying and, to make that happen, we need to help the next generation,” she says. Which is why IRIS’s CSR focuses on one thing – ensuring the next generation, especially those from underprivileged and under-represented groups, is better equipped to enter the workforce and a career in tech. IRISis working with Salford University andWigan College on various schemes and scholarships, with a view to recruiting young talent for its Manchester office.
Every employee at IRIS is offered three days off a year to do charity work, andmany of them visit schools to teachchildren about a career in tech (IRIS has more than 12,000 schools as customers).IRIS also sponsors the charity Bookmark,which teaches children to read, and itpartners with the Prince’s Trust. “I’m very privileged to have the job I have, and I’m going to empower as many people from different parts of life to grab those opportunities,” she says.
Before joining IRIS, Mortimer-Zhika worked at accountancy giant Deloitte and she admits that, while she worked with amazing people, there weren’t many female partners as role models. “There was one female partner who was working part-time, but really she was working full-time and getting paid part-time.” That was back in 2009 – she says Deloitte has done a lot to address the lack of female role models since.
Like many women in power, Mortimer-Zhika explains how she felt she had to conform to a corporate image to be successful. She describes how after a long-distinguished career at Deloitte, the next stage would have been to become a director. “I didn’t think that I could be the best version of myself anymore because I was quite loud and wore bright colourful clothes. I did not fit the image of what a director needed to look like for the end clients.” She even bought some grey suits but said that it “took my sparkle away. I wasn’t me.”
At IRIS, she says she has focused on building a culture where she and all employees can be themselves. “In today’s world it is difficult to separate work and your personal life – you bring work home and you bring home to work. I don’t think it’s humanly possible to conform to someone else’s version of what good looks like for 10 or 12 hours a day.”
She realised early on that she needed a plan to get the work-life balance right for her and her family. “I don’t do school drop-offs and pick-ups because I can’t commit to anything recurring, but I will never miss any of their activities, concerts or plays,” she says. “You get these dates at the startof term and you can put them in the diary and plan ahead.” But even this seemingly simple act shines a light on the problems women at the top face.
“When I first joined IRIS and said I needed to put a nativity play in the diary, my assistant asked if she should note this as a doctor’s appointment,” she says. “I said absolutely not. I am going to work so hard for this business, so when I need an hour off, I want it to be clear what I’m having it off for. You can have me at 9pm or 7am, whenever, but sometimes I am going to be on the football pitch or watching cross country because that is what matters to my boys.”
A different upbringing
Mortimer-Zhika grew up in Albania. She was born in 1979 ata time when the country was under the rule of a dictator and pretty much closed off from the rest of the world. Looking back now, she says it reminds her of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian story of a totalitarian society.
She says it meant her worldview was incredibly small. “We were conditioned to believe that we lived in the best country in the world, and ignorance is bliss. I didn’t know any different,” she says. The only hint at Western ways came from comedian Norman Wisdom, whose shows were allowed, and aired during the controlled four hours of TV in the evening.
And the airwaves were not the only thing that was controlled by the state. “The government decided where you worked, and it had a five-year plan for the economy. They would decide how many doctors, teachers, engineers they needed, and when it came to deciding your degree, you didn’t decide what you wanted to do – they told you. And we just thought that was quite normal.” Mortimer-Zhika also lived under the shadow of war and spent time in bunkers preparing for an imminent invasion. Citizens were warned it was because the world was jealous of Albania’s equal society. Things changed in 1990 but, while the downfall of communism heralded more freedom, things didn’t get better immediately. “People had no boundaries and no benchmark, and it almost flipped the other way around. There were kids with rifles in their hands, it was out of control.” But the end of communism did mean a new life beckoned for Mortimer-Zhika and, aged 16, she was given the chance to study for an International Baccalaureate (IB) at the UWC Atlantic College in Wales.
She admits that she was terrified. “I had never been on a flight. My mum fainted at the airport as I said goodbye. I had $100 in my pocket; you couldn’t even buy pounds.” Getting through security at Heathrow proved a challenge because she had packed her student visa in her hold luggage. “They had to accompany me to my bag to get my documents so I could prove to them what I was doing in the UK,” she says. “It was the most scared I have ever been in my life. When I arrived, I tried to call my parents. They didn’t even have a phone at home, so I had to call somebody we knew who worked for the government and had a phone line, which was a 10-minute walk from my parents’ house.” Once she had overcome her initial homesickness, though, Mortimer-Zhika’s small-world view began to expand.
The college Mortimer-Zhika attended had a mission to promote international understanding, accepting students from around the world. She shared a house with people from Israel and Palestine, and one who had survived the genocide in Rwanda. “It really teaches you about true resilience. We all have our measure of what is tough, but until you’ve had your mind opened to some real problems, we don’t really know what other people go through,” she says. “It was about teaching us the impact of war and trying to remove some of those biases that we are born into.”
It is a lesson she now brings to business. Mortimer-Zhika describes her father as her hero and her biggest inspiration. She knew from an early age that she wanted to follow him into accountancy and economics. But studying these subjects when she’d come from a communist society brought its own biases. Mortimer-Zhika remembers how hard she found economics, which she started to study for her IB. “I spoke little English but, more importantly, I couldn’t translate anything because Albania was run as a centralised economy and the dictionaries didn’t have proper translations for terms like demand and supply. There simply was no free trade or free economy because everything belonged to the government. I couldn’t get it at all.” She recalls going home after her first term and trying to make sense of it with her father. “My dad didn’t get it either. He was talking about long- term plans. And I was like, I don’t think it’s like that – I don’t think it is designed from the top down. The market decides!”
Eventually, she got her head around it and went on to study accountancy and economics at Reading University, where she graduated with a First Class Honours degree, joining accountancy firm Arthur Andersen and then Deloitte. Five years at Acision as vice president of operational and commercial finance came next, followed by a year as chief of staff to the CEO of Mavenir. She joined IRIS as its CFO in 2016, and was appointed its CEO in 2019. “I joined for a number of reasons. Number one – both IRIS and Hg have a fantastic growth mindset with a great reputation for focusing on mission-critical tech,” she says. “I had audited IRIS 20 years before when I was at Deloitte and had followed its success. It was always challenging and complicated but it was growing, and that’s what I loved.”
As CEO, Mortimer-Zhika has taken IRIS Software to a valueof more than £3 billion but she confesses that she may have an eye on a new job – at MI5. “I’ve always wanted to work for MI5. I love puzzles and problem solving and I always ask a lot of questions. But, as I wasn’t born in England, I couldn’t apply,” she says. “I still do their online tests every year. Amazingly, British citizenship is now sufficient. So, watch this space.”
Tips From The Top
What are your tips for a successful business?
1. Make sure the product or service you are offering solves a problem for your customer, is scalable and future proof. Also, consider a subscription model. Sell it once, benefit many times.
2. Play to your strengths and surround yourself with people who have different skill sets to your own. That way, the team complements each other and operates at 100%. Bringing together diverse teams is key to success.
3. Flexibility and diversification should be part of your strategic business armoury. Markets evolve and change quicker than ever before so remain agile and don’t lose your sense of urgency. Even if your business is ahead, never trust success blindly. When your results are better than anticipated or there seems no need to change, ask sceptical questions to stimulate debate and drive success. Stay hungry in paradise and remain one step ahead.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given?
Learn enough to be dangerous but no more – I remember saying I’m running a tech business and I don’t know much about coding. I thought I would take a course but somebody pointed out there is a reason I’m not good at it – it is not my passion.
How do you relax?
I spend time with my wonderful boys. I also havea personal trainer, mainly because I hate exercising!
Is there a piece of tech, other than your phone, that you could not live without?My companion, Alexa. I order all my shopping through the technology, turn on the heating, ask her to remind me of birthdays, and put the blinds down. Sometimes I even randomly talk to her... but that’s our secret!
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