EMC’s Scot still revels in IT

During the 1980s there were two rapidly growing sectors, finance and IT. “I was interested in both these areas and on the one day, I had an offer from a financial institution and one from an IT company. I literally tossed a coin to see which one I would choose - heads for IT and tails for finance,” he says.

The coin landed on heads and Henderson accepted a role a role as marketing director and then moving onto becoming the general manager at Toshiba.

During his time at Toshiba one of the most memorable deals he struck was Computerlac, a Melbourne-based supplier who wanted to sell notebooks to the education sector in Victoria.

“The guy I met from the company believed that every school children should have a notebook, however they were very expensive at the time. I can remember making the deal because the guy was so passionate about what he was doing and shook hands with him on an agreed price. Since then, Computerlac has become a very lucrative business, selling into the education sector in that region.”

In the mid-1990s, Henderson left after seven years landing himself a role as the managing director of AST Computers. At the time, the company was a number five PC company, but crashed into oblivion.

When that happened, he headed to 3Com as the marketing director, but eventually left to pursue a role on the other side of IT - distribution. Henderson accepted the role of category director for Tech Pacific, one of the largest distributors in the Asia Pacific region - before the buy out by Ingram Micro.

Henderson says he has not had any regrets about his career and feels it has only gone from strength to strength. While it might sounds “clichéd”, his philosophy on life is to be positive and ensure the mind, body and spirit is in harmony with one another. “I have a passion for red wine, theatre, people, arts, galleries. I would rather watch a bad live theatre show, then the best program on TV,” he says.

“I remember last year going to a one woman show, where the actor was dressed head to toe in a black cat suit and the audience watched as she went through a mental breakdown. I swear if you came out of that show with dry eyes, then you weren’t human,” he says.

His drive in life can be attributed to having been brought to what he believes is the ‘lucky country’ more than 40 years ago. He moved to Australia with his Dad from Scotland after the death of his mother.

“There are very few countries where you can really take advantage of opportunities like Australia. I’m not just saying that, I’m proud of my Scottish heritage, its part of me and I wake every morning with it,” he says.

“I certainly don’t get out of bed and practice my “ochs” and put on the accent. However I came from Glasgow and it was just a dark, dark, place. It was a poor working area where you had to join gangs to make sure you weren’t beaten up every day.”

Although he concedes he is “better looking” than Billy Connolly, Henderson can understand much of where the comedian’s humour comes from. Both hail from the housing estates in the city of Drumchapel.

“The Scotland I came from is nothing like the Hollywood version, I’m sure there are parts where the heather grows wild along rolling hills, but not where I grew up,” he says. “Although William Wallace is a national hero, if anyone walked around with their face painted blue in Glasgow they would get the shit kicked out of them.”

Henderson is amused by the impact Hollywood has had on the Scottish heritage, since Mel Gibson’s Braveheart film was released. He went back a couple of years ago and went into a shop dedicated to William Wallace memorabilia. “On the tea towels they didn’t have images of the real Wallace, but images of Mel Gibson from the movie Braveheart, I thought it was hilarious,” he says.

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