30 Small Business IT Influencers Worth Following in 2022

The top challenge facing small businesses right now is how to navigate remote work. Andreas Klinger is one of the leading minds in that realm, promoting the practice long before the pandemic changed the nature of work. Klinger, the former head of remote at AngelList, is an investor in Remote First Capital, a group that invests in the next generation of remote work. Small businesses can follow him for the latest insights on how to get the most out of a distributed workforce.

The future of work is always evolving, and advisers like Antonio Vieira Santos are experts on digital transformation, sustainability, and diversity, equity and inclusion. He is currently a social media business evangelist at IT consultancy Atos.

A vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, Boris Evelson is an expert in insights-driven business capabilities. Drawing on a career that includes experience with the world’s largest banks, Evelson helps enterprises define IDB strategies from a holistic standpoint.

Bri Kimmel founded Worklife as a way to bring new creators into the fold of investing. She is an entrepreneur, marketing professional and influencer in the world of women-led enterprises.

A podcast by security company Zscaler, The CIO Evolution covers the art and science of business transformation and the tools CIOs use: cloud, mobile, artificial intelligence and zero trust.

Bridging the gap between data and insights is crucial for business success, and Craig Brown has specialized expertise in that area. Brown pairs a deep technological background with experience in business strategy, demonstrating how businesses can get the most out of the data they’re collecting. Small businesses in particular can follow Brown to learn about the latest trends and how they can lead to growth.

Dana Gardner brings his 30 years of tracking IT advances and disruption to Traceable AI, where he delivers digital business transformation insights. With an audience of 18,000 Twitter and 179,000 LinkedIn followers, he is a voice worth listening to.

The global head of social media for asset management firm Mercer, Danielle Guzman is prolific on both Twitter and LinkedIn, delivering regular insights on topics such as the future of work and data security.

As Deloitte’s cloud strategy officer, David Linthicum is a globally recognized influencer on technologies such as cloud computing, edge computing and security. He shares his expertise via books, radio and podcasts, articles in Forbes and The Wall Street Journal, and keynote speeches.

An editorial partner with Andreessen Horowitz, Derrick Harris helms the venture capital firm’s publication Future, which reports on trends in business and technology that matter to enterprises.

The phrase “future of work” has been uttered almost as often as “new normal” over the past year as businesses gauge how more than 12 months of working remotely will impact their long-term operations. Dion Hinchcliffe is an expert in this area. The author and keynote speaker shares extensively on the topics of cloud and digital workspaces. SMBs can use his insights as they develop their plans.

The author of Newcomer, a popular newsletter on Substack that reports on the inner workings of venture capital and the technology business, Eric Newcomer is one of the industry's most plugged-in journalists.

Evan Kirstel, a self-described “B2B techfluencer,” tweets prolifically at his hundreds of thousands of followers on a range of topics, from open banking to artificial intelligence, digital customer experience and much more.

In The Idealcast, researcher and author Gene Kim discusses trends in DevOps. He brings his research experience to deliver insights on how enterprises can thrive in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Gergely Orosz writes The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter, the No. 1 technology newsletter on Substack, with over 50,000 subscribers. With those credentials, he is a must-follow for all engineers who work in software and tech-related fields.

Henri Pierre-Jacques is a partner at Harlem Capital, a firm that focuses its investments on startups with diverse founders. Through his Substack posts and other social media, Pierre-Jacques gives remarkable insight and new perspectives on all things related to venture capital.

The official podcast of the InspireCIO Leadership Network delivers insights and interviews with member CIOs, discussing technology leadership and problem-solving.

Every week, Adam Shepherd and Jane McCallion, editors at the U.K.-based web publication IT Pro, bring expert insight into the biggest business tech news stories of the past seven days.

From his perch as chief evangelist at Amazon Web Services, Jeff Barr offers guidance and insights on all things public cloud, including advice on serverless tech, cloud security and more.

Josh Long brings his expertise in Java to the role of spring developer advocate at VMware Tanzu, a modular cloud-native application platform that supports DevSecOps in multicloud environments. Long is an author as well as a lead instructor on more than half a dozen training videos on the subject.

The CTO Advisor brand that Keith Townsend founded in 2016 encompasses a podcast, video series and deep dives into the latest in IT. His Twitter account is a fount of knowledge, dispensing everything from live events to consultancy experience.

A public speaker and expert on cloud-enabled services, Lydia Leong is a cloud computing analyst at Gartner. She focuses on Infrastructure as a Service and content delivery networks.

As a security engineer at GitHub, Marco Lancini draws on his experience building security functions at both Fortune 500 companies and exponential-growth startups. His CloudSecList newsletter aims to educate professionals about security advances in cloud-native technologies.

Remote work has brought HR and IT departments together to deliver for customers and employees. Meghan M. Biro is the CEO of TalentCulture, a platform focused on the latest in HR technology. Small businesses can learn how to attract and retain talent via the organization’s website, as well as through Biro's Twitter chat and podcast about work trends.

A keynote speaker, podcaster and author, Michael Coté covers how businesses are using new software to maximize their potential. He works at VMware Tanzu, where his white papers encompass subjects from DevOps to Kubernetes.

Mike Ferguson is a thought leader and independent analyst who brings 40 years of expertise to his consultancy, Intelligent Business Strategies. His keynote speeches and live-event coverage are well worth the follow.

Small businesses must keep an eye to the future, and that means keeping an open mind about what work will look like. Helping inform that vision is Paul Millerd, an expert in working from home and the future of work. In addition to his Twitter feed full of insights into our current working climate, he also authors a newsletter and hosts a podcast called Reimagine Work.

In his engineering role at AWS Security, Scott Piper brings a decade of expertise in cybersecurity, including experience at the National Security Agency. He has developed major cloud security tools such as CloudMapper, CloudTracker and Parliament, and he serves as an organizer for the nonprofit cloud security conference fwd:cloudsec.

Those who follow Simon Porter get a little bit of everything that’s top of mind for IT leaders right now: data, Internet of Things, cloud and digital HR trends. Porter tweets about the role of digital transformation in remote work, business agility and customer relationships. Small businesses looking to build resilience can benefit from his insights.

Small businesses have been at the center of government resourcing throughout the pandemic. The Small Business Technology Coalition looks at those resources through the lens of technology and how digital tools can help SMBs launch and grow. The Small Business Administration subsidiary focuses on resources that cover areas like cybersecurity awareness and how to prepare for disruption.