Blackbird IT welcomes Kelly Griffin as its new CEO

South Australian technology services and consulting firm Blackbird IT has appointed Kelly Griffin as its new chief executive officer, taking over from Ben Corbett after the past three years at DNX.

Blackbird IT was established in 2007 (as LeetGeek) by Richard Stafford with Corbett quickly on board, and has since grown to a team of 60-plus providing a range of managed IT and advisory services. The company was acquired by Evergreen last year.

Based in Adelaide, Griffin joins Blackbird IT with two and a half decades of IT industry experience under his belt, most recently with AWS specialist DNX Solutions following earlier senior roles at AWS itself along with Avanade, Dell, and Datacom among others.

“We’re pleased to welcome Kelly as the new CEO of Blackbird IT, who has shared vision for our next chapter,” the firm stated. “As Blackbird continues to grow, our focus remains the same; helping organisations move forward with clarity, confidence, and technology that supports the way they actually operate. We’re now looking forward to what comes next.“

Prior to serving as general manager for sales, technology, service delivery, and alliances at DNX, Griffin spent three and a half years in senior sales and architect roles at AWS, with shorter stints at Avanade and Telstra preceded by close to a decade between Dell, Datacom, and Dimension Data along with an earlier four years in engineering at another Adelaide IT consultancy Comunet.

“Blackbird has been built over almost two decades into something genuinely special,” Griffin said upon joining the firm. “But Richard and Ben didn’t just build a business, they built a culture, a team, and a reputation that stands for something real in this industry. That foundation is something I have enormous respect for, and I don’t take lightly the privilege of leading what comes next.”

In addition to managed IT, Blackbird provides a range of services around cloud, cybersecurity, networking, automation, compliance, and strategy and consulting. The company was bought by US-based private equity firm Evergreen toward the end of last year (at which point Corbett stepped into the CEO role), and now sits within its mid-market MSP-focused Lyra Technology group.

“Ben and I always said there’s no way we’d sell to private equity since most models revolve around profit at the expense of people and culture,” Stafford said at the time. “But Evergreen’s decentralised model lets our brand, culture, and team remain exactly as they are. This partnership isn’t an exit for Blackbird IT, but an opportunity to accelerate growth on our own terms.”