Andrew Parsons | CCO/Strategy (Co-Founder)
IOEMA

Andrew Parsons is a commercial and strategy leader in subsea and digital infrastructure, with more than twenty-five years commercialising technology at every level of the OSI model at major carriers including BT, Easynet, Level 3, CenturyLink Lumen and Colt. His work spans wholesale, terrestrial and subsea dark fibre, data centre connectivity and global managed optical networks, with recent years specialising in large infrastructure projects. Andrew is a Co-Founder and Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer at IOEMA, a Subsea Company building a repeater based subsea cable system (IOMEA-1) linking the UK, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Norway, and founder of the infrastructure advisory practice SubMatrix. Andrew’s focus has increasingly centred on subsea systems and innovations in environmental and situational sensing. He has sat on the Advisory Board of Sustainable Subsea Networks (SSN), a research initiative of the SubOptic Foundation, since 2022, examining the lifecycle sustainability of the networks that carry almost all transoceanic internet traffic. Earlier roles include control systems engineering in petrochemicals, industrial and public firefighting, retail management, with business ownership and investment across multiple sectors including property, media, services, and leisure. Andrew brings an engineering, operator and commercial perspective to his work, with a particular interest in technological advances and where network resilience reinforces efficiency and environmental performance. Outside of work, Andrew’s interests include design and engineering, music, home automation, woodworking, property development, and a long-standing academic interest in science, technology, systems thinking, and human behaviour.