Irish self-made women to admire
With International Women’s Day approaching we’ve decided to dedicate this week’s blog post to self-made Irish women who can be a role model to any person on the planet. We’ve asked them several questions about business, personal life and idols. Reading the answers we were astonished to know such a successful, confident women who do not give up, believe that mistakes make you stronger and give you experience that you will never learn in books.
Anne is a founder & CEO of Global Invest Her, the global community that helps early-stage women entrepreneurs become investor-ready. Woman’s advocate, TEDx speaker & Huffington Post contributor with her Trailblazing Women series showcasing women role models.
- What is gender equality for you?
Gender equality is my strongest personal value, ever since I was a child. To me, it means equal opportunities for both women and men in all spheres — economic, business, political, educational, health. UN Women states that to date, there is not 1 country in the world that has full gender equality between men and women and the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report states that if we do nothing to change things, it will take over 80 years to reach gender equality. I will not be here then, so am working every day to make that happen sooner.
- What are you proud of?
Professionally, I am proud to have set up my own company to help women entrepreneurs become investor-ready and get more access to finance and help women leaders in business become the best of themselves through my gender diversity work with corporates. I am especially proud of my TEDx talk on investing in women entrepreneurs, because of the personal journey I went on to strip back my ideas into condensed inspirational stories to get my key messages across. On a personal level, I am proud of my happy marriage and two wonderful children.
- What advice would you give to younger yourself?
“Believe in yourself, trust your gut and learn influencing skills early. It’s not all about being right or being liked. Being true to yourself means listening to your inner voice and values and channelling your energy directly into your passion. You have a much greater impact on other people than you think.”
Elva Carri
Elva is a Co-founder of GirlCrew — a 30 000 participants girls’ community that helps to find pals in different cities around the globe.
- What are you proud of?
I’m proud of the fact that I’ve created something that brings people happiness, and friendship. Every little story I hear from members where it’s changed their lives in some way makes me emotional. I think it’s in large part down to the people themselves, they had to make an effort too, but I’m proud of creating an environment where this happens on such a regular basis.
- What advice would you give to younger yourself?
I don’t know what advice I’d give to my younger self. My younger self was pretty smart. The evening before I was to turn ten years old, I remember being on the swing in our garden, a sunny, summer evening and I thought to myself, “Double digits tomorrow, it’s all downhill from here if I’m not careful.” I promised myself I would do what I could to stay kind and happy because that was when I felt best. I feel like I would just want to say “Well done nine-year-old Elva, good call. And enjoy the swing and being outside because you’re going to spend a lot of time sitting at a laptop in the future!”
- How is it to work in a female community?
Working in a female community is amazing. There’s great communication, sharing, support, fun and when there’s a goal — there is NO stopping them! I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so organised and efficient as a group of women! That goes for our team as well as the entire GirlCrew community. Witnessing that collective power is an awesome and inspiring thing. It makes it even harder to see women held back or not showcased for their amazingness in other areas because really I think everyone misses out if women don’t feel like they’re in a supportive enough environment to be as amazing as they are. Any ladies reading this — don’t be toning down your greatness to make sure others don’t feel small. We all benefit when you just go for it.
Aine Mulloy
Aine is Market Research & Editorial Executive of The Educational Company of Ireland, co-founder of GirlCrew
- What advice would you give to younger yourself?
Keep learning — I think so many people just see education as a box ticking exercise to get a job, but it’s so much more and there are so many ways to learn. It’s important to keep growing as a person and learning new skills is vital to that. The people around you have so much knowledge to give, and most are willing to share if you ask.
- How is it to work in a female community?
It’s a very interesting dynamic, I think it can be much more collaborative than other environments I’ve worked in as people are much more willing to discuss ideas and seek outside advice. It’s been a real learning curve, but being honest about what we do, and don’t, know, has served us well.
- What was the best advice you’ve ever got?
Do what’s right for you; while it can be very hard to follow you need to go with your gut. If something is niggling you, it generally means it’s not the right fit.
Pamela Newenham
Pamela is Irish Times business journalist, co-founder of GirlCrew
- What was the best advice you’ve ever got?
“Trust everyone, check everything” — advice from my dad! As a start-up, we are constantly getting advice from people on how to do things, when to do them, what we should be doing etc. While it’s good to listen to it all, the advice isn’t always right.
- Who supported you when you started?
A lot of people have supported and helped me — from my family, to friends, to work colleagues. They say behind every great man, is a great woman, but I think it works both ways. A lot of men have been hugely supportive of GirlCrew, advising us or investing in the business. I’ll certainly be thinking about the (almost) 30,000 women, who are members of GirlCrew for International Women’s Day, but I won’t be forgetting about the men who’ve helped us along the way. Other female entrepreneurs have also been amazing support — Jayne Ronayne from KonnectAgain definitely deserves a special mention!
- What are you most proud of?
The fact that thousands of women all over the world have more friends, bigger social circles and better professional networks because of GirlCrew, and they achieved this themselves. It’s never easy to go to an event alone, especially when you don’t know anyone attending, but the GirlCrew members who do never regret it.
Head of Digital at Insight Consultants. She was included in Top 50 People to Watch in 2015 and Top 5 PR pros to connect with in 2016.
What is gender equality for you?
Gender equality to me means exactly that — equality! Not that women are better than men or men are better than women but that we can equally achieve great things and support each other in doing so. The biggest influences in my life have been both male and female. Instead of focusing on how we are different from men, let’s start celebrating all the things we have in common and what we can achieve together.
- What was your biggest challenge?
My biggest challenge professionally has always been learning how to say no! It’s something I still sometimes struggle with as my natural instinct is always to try and help someone if I can, but the reality is that you can’t do it all and sometimes you just have to say no. Knowing how and when to value yourself is often a big challenge for people, particularly when you’re starting out but unfortunately favours don’t pay the bills!
- How is it to work in a female community?
I think we’re very lucky to have so many incredible, inspirational, professional females of our generation in Ireland. Every day I am meeting or learning of more incredible Irish women who are making waves in their chosen industry and there’s something special about being part of the “awakening the feminism” generation. It’s a phenomenal legacy to leave the next generation.
Aislinn Enright and Dervilla O’Brien
Founders of HealthBridge — technology that provides a new, cost-effective and quality assured pathway for patient engagement and clinical oversight between clinical visits for mental health service patients in the UK and Ireland.
- What are you proud of?
We took the plunge and that we are doing it. It’s taken us just over a year to get to version 1 of our product, and our first NHS pilot test will start in May.
- What advice would you give to younger yourself?
Do it sooner, have confidence in yourself and don’t fear failure. There is never a right time — JUST DO IT!
- What was your biggest mistake and what did you learn from it?
Underestimating the time it takes for product and customer development. Everything takes twice as long as we expect.
- What is gender equality for you?
That the quality of your proposition is considered before your gender. Current statistics on investment suggest that’s not the case.
“Under 3pc of tech venture capital in Ireland goes to companies led by women, with the average individual investment ten times less than for male-run firms, an Irish Independent investigation shows.”
- What was your biggest challenge?
Our ongoing challenge is obtaining sufficient investment to ensure full product development. Cash flow is limited until you have a product, so we have had to fund ourselves. It takes time to develop a product, get access to customers and procurement in the health services, especially here in Ireland.
- What was the best advice you’ve ever got?
Think of the big vision and go for it — woman tend to be conservative in the scope of their ambition. Ena Prosser, Fountain Healthcare Founders
Start selling — the product doesn’t need to be perfect at early stage development — focus on where you want to get to — Ian Lucey, Lucey Fund
Georgina Kearney and Siobhán ní Chofaigh
Founders of Mint Tek Circuits — the go-to website for hardware developers to create their prototypes.
- Who supported you when you started?
We were supported by a former classmate from an MBA that we did with Smurfit Business School — he believed in us and our idea and he became our first investor. We were also supported hugely by Jean O’Sullivan, who was our first point of contact with Enterprise Ireland. She helped us apply for the Competitive Feasibility Fund, which was our first funding from Enterprise Ireland.
- What was the best advice you’ve ever got?
Siobhán received great advice from Eoin O’Driscoll, chairman of the Tyndall Institute and a member of various other boards, who said the key to an extraordinary business is targeting a niche market and leveraging that success.
Georgina’s favourite piece of advice was from Mary Cronin who runs ThousandSeeds, a consultancy focused on stimulating entrepreneurship, who advised us to conduct hundreds of customer interviews and constantly seek to understand our customers needs more deeply and refine our product offering accordingly.
- How is it to work in a female community?
We have been very lucky to be selected to participate in two programs specifically aimed at women. We did the High Fliers Programme with the Ryan Academy last year run by Niamh Collins, and this year Siobhán is participating in the Enterprise Ireland Going for Growth Programme — her group is headed up by Siofra Flood, COO of Drop and a startup specialist. We are currently part of the first Bank of Ireland tech incubator, which is managed by Tracy Keogh, and has a very strong female participation. We are very lucky to have Sarita Johnston, who manages female entrepreneurship, as our DA in Enterprise Ireland (EI). She is supporting us in developing through the EI High Performance Startup (HPSU) programme.
PS: We couldn’t mention all female entrepreneurs of Ireland. Because if we did, the post would have been as big as Book of Kells. There are so many women to admire that if you just turn your head you will find one. Thank you ladies, for making this world more beautiful!
Happy International Women’s Day!
