My dad was a surgeon so we lived in Belfast and Toronto until I was seven while he did his training. I was happy at school in Loreto Dalkey and when I left in 1995 I studied Spanish and Politics in UCD because I loved the language. I studied Spanish and German for my Leaving and did some Spanish exchanges – I just loved everything about Spain.

When I graduated I moved to Madrid where I taught English and worked in Iberia’s lost luggage call centre – an experience which made me fluent fast. I did not have access to email on a daily basis, there were no smartphones, and I missed my family and friends. It’s not like living abroad today when staying in touch is easy.

I also did not want to be teaching English or working in a call centre for the rest of my life. When I came back, Ireland was booming in 2000 and I landed a job as a fund administrator. I was there less than a year because I applied to the graduate programme with Ibec and got it with Bord Fáilte.

This was the year it morphed into Tourism Ireland, because of the Good Friday Agreement all our marketing changed to cover the island of Ireland – it was a really interesting time.

When my year was up there was no option to extend so I bounced back into my old job at Man Investments and was there nearly two years when a publicity job with Tourism Ireland in Madrid came up in 2004.

I had my ear to the ground and the people I had worked with knew I wanted it. I was enjoying Ireland but a part of me loved Spain and I was keen to get back.

I was working with the Spanish media bringing them to Ireland. It was the start of digitalisation at Tourism Ireland which was the biggest change since I joined. When the manager position came up I applied, I was not out of my 20s but I felt ready.

Then I went to Frankfurt in 2010 where I covered a maternity manager contract. This was such a busy office – the TV budgets I could only dream of in Spain. Germany had recovered fairly quickly after the recession. German tourists are not big spenders but they are loyal and it’s our fifth biggest market.

My German was not as good as my Spanish but we could speak English internally. If I was there permanently I would have spoken German. That’s been one of my learnings, any country we are operating in, if we want people to visit Ireland, we need to persuade them in their language.

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Familiarisation trips

Just after St Patrick’s Day I brought 55 tour operators from across the US to Ireland for a sort of speed dating tourism event in Killarney.

They got to meet Irish tourism exhibitors and try out hotels. It was fun, and very busy, but I was able to take a few days off in Ireland and I’m taking a break this week to go to Madrid.

The US is Ireland’s number one tourism market – they spend more and stay longer. Summer sells itself and my focus now is on encouraging more off peak and off the beaten track.

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Ready for the rebound

During Covid in Madrid we were lucky we could focus on digital activity and we came out of it re-energised.

My mornings are always crazy. At 5pm in Ireland, it’s 9am in San Francisco so from 8am I’m on Teams calls with Ireland.

I wake up to a full inbox – I really don’t want to do a quick check if I wake early. By 5am I could have 60 emails waiting.

I report to New York. So I’m on calls with them, organising events. At the start of February we held a sales mission with 15 tourism companies and hotels travelling from Ireland and we went to Dallas, Houston and Denver.

So much organisation goes into those trips – sourcing the venues, getting entertainment – we try to think of everything we can to create business for the Irish companies when they meet with the travel trade.

I’ll be on calls to the Department of Foreign Affairs – they come to all our events. We are a hub office looking after the West Coast, and conferences in Las Vegas are very popular with the travel trade so I’m often travelling there.

When I am on the road I’m eating crap so I try to bring a healthy lunch with me into the office. We have a lovely shared kitchen space. Or I head out and buy a salad, though San Francisco is incredibly expensive.

A lot of the functions I go to will have alcohol but I try not to drink during the week. I’m not really one for Irish pubs. In Madrid it’s a different social life. I will go to an Irish bar to watch rugby and I went during the World Cup, but they are a bit too cartoon-like for me. I prefer tapas bars.

When 6pm rolls around Ireland is long closed and, unless we have a big sales mission coming up, work will be quiet then so I try to go swimming or for a run.

There is a big network of Irish businesses in San Francisco but on a personal level I don’t know many people as I travel so much.

I feel lucky my work gives me a sense of pride. In the US, St Patrick’s Day was huge – everyone was wearing green. I left that evening to travel to Ireland for the speed dating tourism trip and the headline news was the Taoiseach meeting the president.

It feels special to be associated with Ireland, there are some pretty good gigs.

Though I won’t say I don’t get tired sometimes. There’s lots of travel.

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Growth mindset

We had been planning to set up an office in San Francisco for a while but then Covid intervened.

When the job came up it was way out of my comfort zone, I would have no other colleagues there, we had a space within Ireland House, but I had to recruit the team and get things running.

I was nervous before I came, when you don’t know what you are getting yourself into it is hard to imagine what’s ahead. And it was difficult to find the right people. But we did, there are three of us now, it’s going great.

I was in Madrid for a long time and this was a fantastic opportunity to do something new. It was a big jump for me and I’m happy I took the chance.

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