True strategic vision is not a top-down process but rather one that enables bottom-up, grassroots implementation. Overall, my experience as a business executive taught me the importance of effective communication and employee engagement, clear decision-making processes, and a focus on activities that have the greatest impact on the organization.
The most important lessons I have learned in leadership were taught to me by people who worked for me.
I have spent thousands of hours training in, thinking about, researching, and practicing leadership and delegation. Because people are different, it’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of a thing! That said, there are best practices that will give anyone a good foundation.
Respect goes further than being polite. It is much more about ensuring people are listened to and given the authority they deserve for their experience, which includes incorporating that experience into ongoing initiatives.
I have had a strong focus on developing options for businesses I have worked with – as well as ensuring the development of those options. I have led many disruptive changes and technology introductions, and have even been featured in media outlets for innovation.
Three things stand out as crucial to me after all of that: Knowledge & idea management; focus; timing.
I was born in a very touristy little fishing village in Ireland where my dad had a windsurfing school and sporting goods shops. My dad is American and my mom is Irish. They met in Spain where they both lived when they were young.
The economy in Ireland in the 80s and early 90s was bad and the landlord for my dad’s main sports shop was ‘a bit of a chancer’, as they say in Ireland. He raised the rent to an unprofitable level, my dad closed down his businesses, and we left.
We moved to the US where my dad used his Business Education degree to give him a kick start to become a certified financial planner, and registered underwriter, and a whole load of other licenses – starting his own business again. My mom used her master’s degree in Fine Arts to be a stay-at-home mom.
With one income, a brand new business, and having to set up a new household, for the first few years we were what could only be described as poor.
After a couple years in the suburbs of Chicago, we moved to a small town in the sticks. I learned to artificially inseminate a cow in Health Class. Where did they get the cow, you ask? One of the other kids brought it in from home.
A dirty little secret that I keep from my toddler is that I really hate onions. If there were a political party based around the eradication of onions, I would donate. I would rather eat eyeballs or brains than onions. This is my favorite photo ever seen on the internet. It was sent to me by a friend and colleague.
As a favour for a friend, I once did some hair modelling for a Wella hair competition. It was awkward. Posing for the photos felt really silly in a room full of people. I usually just do that when I’m by myself in front of the mirror in my bedroom.
I had my hair dyed really red – like Bozo red. I don’t usually dye my hair because it’s very expensive and you have to keep going back to get it touched up. When I tried to dye my hair back to the normal colour it kept fading and I kept having to pay to dye it back. Eventually, I got sick of this expensive little routine and shaved my hair off. For a while, I ended up needing more haircuts than usual to avoid the mullet look, but I’m back to low-maintenance, no dye, long hair now.
The short hair wasn’t my best look. Oh yeah, and my hair is curly which was very awkward for regrowth. Didn’t think that one through.
Ask most people I know for one word to describe me and they’ll say ‘smart’. I got to go to the special summer camp at 5 years old. We dissected squid. I got 99th percentile in all my state exams. The dissecting continued. Frogs, fetal pigs, various bugs and worms… With high ACT scores, I was offered honors program placement in college. My dad told me not to worry about that. No employer would care enough to hire you based on being in an honors programme, and you wouldn’t get the same social experience. Thank God for my dad.
In my junior year, I ended up getting permission to take the honors Economics course as a one-off since you could get the requirement out of the way in one semester instead of two. Those other honors kids had had all their classes together for the full 2.5 years, even though there were 30,000 students at the university. It was like a weird social experiment and I felt very lucky not to have been a part of it for more than just Honors Econ.
Despite that near miss, today I definitely err on the side of being over-intellectual. It’s not to be a knob. That’s just how it fits in my brain. Apologies up front. Despite being a natural smarty pants, I think the qualities that have led to the most success in my life have been resilience, hard work, and strong long-term vision. I would trade these for the intelligence in a crunch. I’ve known a lot of people smarter than me who weren’t able to realize their potential without these characteristics and I’ve met a lot of people who were no smarter than anyone else but who had strong work ethic and resilience and were much more successful than their peers. Everyone needs a bit of moxie!
My workout philosophy in two phrases: 1. Do exercise you don’t notice. 2. The best workouts are done laying down.
I do Pilates in my living room most mornings. My workouts last 5, 10, 15 or maximum 20 minutes if I’m feeling frisky. These workouts are almost always 100% done laying on my back. Sometimes I even keep the lights off and my eyes shut.
The rest of my exercise is built into my routine in ways I don’t even think about. I do things like running for the bus; taking the stairs – 7 flights to my office for the last 7 years; parking far away when I drive and walking the extra block or two; working at a standing desk and doing standing crunches when I’m reading through something, etc. Nothing ever works up a sweat or takes longer than a few minutes. I hate the gym. Resistance bands saved my life.
As with everything in life, consistency is better than intensity. Once I set small, achievable goals that I was less likely to make excuses about, I became much fitter.
I’ve been to more countries than I can count on my fingers and toes combined. Ireland and the US are obvious ones. In no particular order, I also lived, worked, spent time in, or just visited Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Belize, Peru, New Zealand, Australia, China, Hong Kong, UAE, India, the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Czech Republic, Malta, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Greece, Morocco, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Africa. I don’t count airport layovers. I have at least spent a weekend in all of these places and many of them I stayed for months or years.
So what does being a smarty pants, globe trotting, onion hating, Pilates doing, one-time hair model qualify you for? Not much, it turns out.
As a result, I have needed to get some actual qualifications. I graduated from the University of Missouri – Columbia with one degree in International Business Management and another in International Studies, with a minor in Spanish and an emphasis in French. MU’s Trulaske College of Business is in the nation’s Top 50 undergraduate programs in a US News & World Report ranking of over 650 business schools, placing the college among the top seven percent overall. The year I decided to go to Mizzou, the college was featured in Money Magazine’s Best Buys for a College Education.
I was granted a scholarship to earn my MBA in the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School in Dublin, which is ranked in the top 100 MBA programmes globally and top 20 in Europe, and is the only Triple Crown Accredited programme in Ireland. Along with tertiary degrees, I have completed further education through FETAC Level 5 certification in Digital Marketing, and was awarded the top score in Ireland in completing my CIMA Advanced Diploma in Management Accounting.
Having worked on four different continents, building a very diverse and unusual work history, I have proven my ability to thrive in cross cultural teams and varied industries. This set me up for success in my longest and most recent role on the executive management team of Dublin Airport as Head of Strategy, reporting to the MD. I was the youngest member of this team by almost 10 years and the largest age gap was more than 25 years.
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