Ashley Holt

A career in professional football was Ashley Holt’s first ambition, until injury forced him to leave Blackpool FC and start again. Door-to-door sales, advertising and IT followed before he found his way into AV, eventually joining ViewSonic and progressing from sales manager to country head for the UK and Ireland.

Holt now leads a 15-person sales, marketing and operations team. Over the past year, he has pushed accessibility higher up the agenda, bringing features such as dyslexia filters, subtitles and language translation into more customer conversations. He has also encouraged the use of AI and automation internally to reduce administrative work and free up time for customer-facing activity.

Commercially, ViewSonic reached the number-one position in the UK interactive display market during the first half of 2026, alongside growth in areas including LED.

His unconventional route into the industry has also shaped how he thinks about talent. Holt says being underestimated because of his age or northern accent made him more conscious of looking beyond CVs and first impressions. He wants AV to create clearer routes into technical careers and give installers, technical managers and system architects greater recognition for the skilled work they do.

Football still influences his leadership: the apprenticeship model taught him the value of coaching, practice and patient progression.