In this Winners Circle episode, host Russ Fordyce sits down with Samantha Clarke, Head of Partnerships at VDURA and 2025 Herizon Award winner, to talk about what it really takes to feed the GPU hungry world of AI and HPC.

Samantha shares how her journey from hands on engineer in New Zealand, designing and launching electronic ovens, to global partnerships leader in high performance data has shaped the way she solves problems and builds ecosystems. She explains why she sees sales and partnerships as engineering with people, and how that mindset helps her co create solutions with customers, integrators, and cloud providers.

The conversation dives into:

• How HPC and AI now converge to accelerate breakthroughs in drug discovery, weather analysis, autonomous systems, and even electric air transport
• Why VDURA focuses on moving data as fast as possible to GPUs and what “feed the beast” means in real workloads
• The shift from big consulting led transformations to nimble technology partnerships that can deliver near cloud experiences on prem and at the edge
• How petabyte to exabyte scale organizations can think about cloud, edge, and on prem storage as one continuum rather than either or choices

Samantha breaks down why proximity to data and compute matters so much for AI performance, what it means to make on prem feel like cloud, and how VDURA designs for multi site architectures, replication, and ease of use so customers can get from purchase to productivity fast. She also talks about working with partners like server, networking, and GPU vendors to deliver validated solutions that can be deployed quickly instead of stitching everything together from scratch.

On the go to market side, Samantha walks through the transformation she has led from transactional selling to solution led, partner centric growth. She shares concrete lessons on:

• Picking a small number of strategic channel and integration partners and investing deeply in them
• Enabling partners with training, marketing, and tools so they can independently position and deliver the solution
• Overcoming internal resistance from field sellers who are used to owning every deal and showing them how strong partners actually expand territories and revenue

Looking ahead, Samantha offers a pragmatic view of how enterprises should approach AI adoption. She recommends using cloud and AI focused neoclouds to experiment quickly, while always architecting with an exit plan so data, workloads, and economics can shift to on prem or hybrid models when scale, cost, or performance demand it. The key is to think about step one, but design for steps three and four from the start.

The episode closes on a powerful note about leadership and representation. As a Herizon Award winner, Samantha talks about why she actively champions women in industry, the importance of mentors and sponsors, and her simple challenge to everyone listening: find at least one woman who could use encouragement, mentoring, or validation and invest an hour a month in her growth.

If you care about AI infrastructure, edge architectures, partner ecosystems, or building a more inclusive tech industry, this conversation delivers a rare blend of deep technical perspective and human centered leadership.

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