At 105 centimetres or 3' 5" tall, Sinéad Burke has become a booming voice in the global fashion world. Talking equality with US Vice Presidents and people such as Oprah, speaking not once, but twice, at Davos and being a contributing editor to British Vogue, Sinéad has the goal of designing a world that works for everyone. However, she wasn't alway…

Ruth Curran knows the answer to both of those questions. Ruth travels the world to find the best CEOs, CFOs and CIOs for a whole range of high-level organisations. She’s managing partner at MERC, Ireland’s leading executive search firm – a role she balances with being a mother to four children all under the age of 12. In the latest Broadly Speaking…

Managing a team of 2,000 employees is a huge responsibility, but Anne O’Leary takes it all in her stride. As chief executive of Vodafone Ireland, she has worked hard to build an inclusive, flexible and empathetic culture. Anne does not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to people management. Instead she is focused on understanding what works f…

When entrepreneur Nikki Evans quit her well-paid management consulting job in London to move home to Ireland during the recession and start a pre-paid gift card business, people thought she was bonkers. But last year, over a decade after launching her business and a few pivots later, she sold her company for €6 million. Now Nikki is chief executive…

It was an awkward dinner and a "make or break" moment. Louise Grubb, co-founder and CEO of TriviumVet was going to have to explain how her wonderful pharmaceutical business couldn't pay the dinner bill. She was in Copenhagen wining and dining a man who would become a major and game-changing distributor for her nutraceutical product. Thankfully he p…

Andreea Wade is famous on the start-up scene and she is also intimately acquainted with the boardroom tables of venture capital firms. That's because she's CEO of Opening, a fast-growing start-up that's using artificial intelligence in the recruitment industry. The serial entrepreneur tells Margaret E Ward about what it's like to get funding as a f…

She'd just become partner at Accenture, and Vivienne Jupp assumed she'd be joined by lots more women in the partnership ranks. She wasn't. The veteran board member and businesswoman began to notice two things: people talked differently about women than they did about men and men talked about going home to "babysit" their children. Vivienne decided …

Trish Long is the General Manager and Vice President of Disney in Ireland. She's also worked with Oprah. How did she do it? She shares her remarkable and unplanned path with Margaret E Ward, one that began with her bargaining with her father to stay in school at age of 14. If you've ever beaten yourself for lacking focus or commitment in your caree…

Newly married, a 10-day-old baby and newly redundant, 2008 was an interesting year for Sara Mitchell and Gavin McCarthy. But 2009 was an even more interesting year, when the pair, a former property developer and marketing professional with no food business experience whatsoever, decided to buy a food truck and set up Ireland's first chicken rotisse…

Especially in Hollywood, but actress and filmmaker Naomi McDougall Jones is proving them wrong. She reveals to Margaret E Ward how she not only crowdfunded but created an an engaged and loyal audience for her very first film. It's a 'how to' that can be translated to any industry. Naomi also shares her New York backstory, auditioning relentlessly f…

Professor Aoife McLysaght discovered a totally new human gene. Her day job is as a genetic scientist, but there was a time when she was going to give it all up. After an unfriendly encounter with a colleague who queried her holiday leave, she sent a frank email to her boss. "Guess what," she wrote, "I read books that aren't all science books, I hav…

GirlCrew - it's a global online platform and app that helps women make new friends, wherever they are in the world. It all started when a young woman, left alone due to coupled-up friends, needed someone to go to a concert with. A short note posted online, in search of a buddy, turned into GirlCrew. It has since saved women from bad dates, helped p…

Fionnuala Meehan had "no clear career path" after her arts degree. So she took a job in a call centre where she was regularly pranked by German teenagers. She had her first child while still working in the call centre, then later moving on to work for internet giant AOL. Next stop was Google, where she now manages 650 staff as head of Irish operati…

Dr Ciara Clancy, accidental entrepreneur, physiotherapist, and 20-something CEO, has just been named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She plasters her office not with accolades and press clippings, but with her "why." In her office you'll find thank you cards and letters all over the walls, from the thousands of people her technology has helped. Cia…

Businessman Feargal Quinn's first book Crowning the Consumer sold more than 100,000 copies and was translated into 14 languages. It came after building a national chain of grocery stores, Superquinn, which he started at the age of 23. How did he do it? By always having the advantage over his competitor. And how did he do that? By making the custome…

Ellvena Graham, OBE, is currently chairman of ESB, Ireland's electricity supply board, but in 2008 she was a director in the Royal Bank of Scotland when it lost £24.3bn - the biggest corporate loss in British history. How did the daughter of a mechanic from a rural town survive? She tells Margaret E Ward, through deep exhales, how she navigated tho…

When the recession hit in 2008, Bobby Kerr's national chain of more than 100 coffee shops, Insomnia, was on the frontline. "We were a luxury item," he tells Margaret E Ward. How do you survive that? By 2008, Bobby was a well-seasoned businessman used to risk. He had, after all, left a very comfortable job at 36, five days after the birth of his fou…

Ireland's first female private investigator (PI) Sandra Mara, cracked her first case at 9. She found not only her passion but also fulfilment and decided to follow her father into the family business of private investigations. "That's no job for a woman," he said as he tried desperately to throw her off course. Sandra, however, went on to have a le…

"I need help" - the 3 most powerful words any manager or entrepreneur can say. Aine Kerr is a serial risk taker. She left her permanent pensionable teaching job at 20, to retrain as a journalist. She left her high-profile political correspondent role in the Irish Independent to join international media start-up, Storyful, during the recession. She …