The Career Scoop

Maeve talks about her job as Project Manager at MYDAWA, a Kenyan end-to-end online healthcare solution. Kenyan e-health startup MyDawa has raised $20 million from private equity investor Alta Semper Capital to expand its regional reach and product offerings with the aim of becoming an all-in-one health platform for users. MyDawa, which launched in 2016, has diversified from an e-pharmacy to include online and in-person consultations, as well as laboratory services at its expanding network of walk-in pharmacies and health centers. It has also launched its own branded products, and plans to open up its technology infrastructure from telehealth to fulfilment, helping other businesses in the health sector to scale. It claims to have already inked deals with some of Kenya’s biggest clinic chains, which are looking to expand their reach. Maeve's work experience includes project management, product innovation, business development, research and strategic plan road mapping. She have worked with investments from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Irish Aid, Misean Cara and the EU, and worked with organisations based in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, the US and Ireland. She holds an MSc in Africa & International Development from the University of Edinburgh. And a BA in Business & Political Science from Trinity College Dublin.

Simon Bewley, International Tag Federation Board Member, Entrepreneur and "power house" behind the upcoming Tag Rugby World Cup in UL Limerick, Ireland, 2nd to the 5th of August 2023. Tag Players ( c 2000) from Ireland, UK, France, Australia, New Zeeland, Japan, Lebanon, Vietnam and Hong Kong will participate. Women's and Men's Teams from U/21's to Over 60's will participate. Opening ceremony Tuesday 1st of August. Kick Off Wednesday 2nd of August 2023.

Ryan was born in Greenwich, and grew up in Westport, CT. He attended Chemical and Biological studies at Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI.  He discovered his passion for wine after numerous trips to Napa Valley, specifically the Spring Mountain AVA located just north of Saint Helena. He worked extensively with producers on Spring Mountain, but most closely with Cain Vineyards. Upon returning to New York City, He began studying at the International Culinary Center for his Court of Masters Sommelier Certified level accreditation.  After receiving the Walter Clore Scholar award he began to work as a Sommelier at Betony, a three star Michelin restaurant  in NY. He then moved to the Four Seasons Restaurant, as Head Sommelier. By chance, he met the owners of the Mercantile Group, and was offered a job in Dublin. His Sommelier career continues to progress at Cafe en Seine located in Dublin.

Michael Grier is the Commercial Director of the Royal Gazette in Bermuda. 

Peter O’Reilly is the rugby correspondent of The Sunday Times Irish Edition and has been writing about rugby since the sport went professional in the mid-1990s. He was previously an international cricketer, English teacher and a student of art history. Peter has collaborated on books with Anthony Foley and Johnny Sexton.

Morgan is an independent nutritional therapist who provides one-on-one consultations for men and women with a wide variety of health struggles. She takes a holistic approach to nutrition to help clients struggling with weight loss, chronic fatigue, digestive distress and more. Morgan gives her clients the tools they need to improve their overall health, support any health concerns and find the root cause of symptoms by using nutrition, lifestyle changes, and supplementation. She sees clients worldwide including the UK, Europe and the USA. Prior to her career in the health and wellness world, Morgan received her BS and MS from the University of Colorado, Boulder in structural engineering. She is a licensed professional engineer and worked as a structural engineer for 5 years before making the leap to pursue her passion in nutrition.

Nick began writing and directing award-winning short films in 2003, culminating in his third short Shoe being Oscar-shortlisted at the 2011 Academy Awards. Nick’s debut feature The Drummer And The Keeper premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh 2017, where it won Best Irish First Feature. The Drummer And The Keeper went on to win 18 awards on the international film circuit, including Best Film at the Cleveland International Film Festival, Best Foreign Film at the Newport Beach International Film Festival and the Silver Award at the Emden-Norderney International Filmfest. It received 5 nominations at the 2018 IFTAs, including Best Screenplay for Nick’s script. Nick’s screenplay was also one of three nominees at the 2018 Irish Writers Guild ZeBBie Awards for Best Feature Film Script. In 2018 Nick set up The Story Works, an innovative independent TV writers room with the aim of generating new television drama with global potential. He was selected for the Screenskills LA Writers Room Placements in November 2019. Bedsitterland, a new feature film written and to be directed by Nick, was selected for the Berlinale Co-Production Market in February 2020 and is currently in development. Nick originally qualified as solicitor, but gave up his legal career the same day to embark on a musical career, first fronting acclaimed Irish band The Fat Lady Sings and subsequently as a Choice Music Prize-nominated solo artist. In June 2022, he cycled from Ireland to the Glastonbury Festival, performing at venues en route and filming the journey for a future documentary about more sustainable approaches to live music. In addition to his achievements in film and music, Nick is also one of Ireland’s most highly regarded advertising creatives. He has created award-winning campaigns for Aer Lingus, AIB, the Green Party, Walkers Crisps, Bord Gáis Energy, Toyota, the Irish Independent, and most notably Guinness for whom he wrote five major TV spots, including the Clio-winning Tom Crean, and Quarrel which introduced the viewing public to Michael Fassbender. He has directed TV spots and online films for Barry’s Tea, AIB, SSE Airtricity, the Irish Film Archive (featuring Saoirse Ronan), SVP and the Simon Communities.

Jon Ferrara, has been recognized for pioneering innovation in the customer management category. He's the founder and CEO of Nimble, an award-winning social sales, and marketing CRM for individuals and teams. It's Ranked #1 in Overall Satisfaction by G2 Crowd and integrates with Microsoft Office 365 and Google G Suite. Learn more at Nimble.com. Ferrara was the creator and co-founder of the award-winning customer management product GoldMine. In 1999, Goldmine got acquired by FrontRange and Ferrara left to pursue other interests. During those years, Ferrara continued to watch the CRM market. He saw that most of the CRM products that were serving small businesses moved upmarket (and became more costly and complex) or fell by the wayside, leaving the market underserved. Specialties: - Entrepreneurship and Product Innovation - Brand and Identity Development - Marketing and Sales Strategy - Managing Global 350+ persons Corporations

David Tucker is Chairman of The Board of World Currencies and a former fighter pilot with the RAF. He shares with our listeners his career journey from joining the RAF, learning to fly fighter jets and then moving through the world of financial services. 

Shauna’s story really began when she said NO to terrible leadership She is an accredited and award-winning transformational coach to founders, leaders and teams of fast-growing remote companies, a speaker, emotional intelligence practitioner and remote team researcher. She helps remote organisations sustain their engagement, productivity and wellbeing so that they can focus on the innovation and creating a successful business. Her mission is simple. To empower remote teams to develop self-awareness and sustainability practices to build emotionally healthy and thriving organisations, for the long-term. Most of the world is working remotely, and while it can be a blessing for some, it can also be a very difficult experience for others. 7 out of 10 professionals working from home experienced burnout in 2021. A similar stat in 2022. As an accredited coach that specialises in remote working, Shauna wants to empower hundreds of remote teams around the world to develop the self-awareness, knowledge and habits that will sustain them in working in a healthy way, so that they as humans, teams and businesses can achieve true greatness. Her book Managing Burnout - How to Develop a Happy and Healthy Workforce - The book will Publish on 27th December 2022. Check out the link for further information: Managing Employee Burnout - By Shauna Moran : Target

Our guest today is John Boylan who is CEO of Arcadian Risk Capital in Bermuda. He previously served as Global Chief Casualty Underwriter at Max Capital and Markel. Before that, he served as Chief Casualty Underwriter at XL Europe. John has over 30 years of experience in the insurance sector, with an exemplary track record of building and leading global underwriting teams. John, hails from county Monaghan in Ireland and is a First class honours graduate of University College, Dublin, with a BA in Business Studies.

Mick is currently Managing Partner of Grant Thornton, after previously leading the firms Advisory Services offering. He has specialised in all forms of insolvency and corporate recovery across numerous industries including: construction, retail, telecoms, banking and aviation amongst others. Mick shares with James his career journey to-date from leaving school, studying accountancy by night to currently leading a team of over 2,000 people, in 8 offices across Ireland, Isle of Man and  Bermuda.   

Fiona has spent the last 20 years in Bermuda and is originally from New Zealand. Fiona currently serves as an Independent Director of four publicly listed companies.  Those companies are listed on the NASDAQ, the London Stock Exchange or the Australian Stock Exchange respectively. These companies operate in the infrastructure, technology and telecommunications, customer experience or private equity space.  Fiona is also a Director of the Bermuda Business Development Agency and is focused on how to build on Bermuda’s ambition to be a global technology hub. Prior to commencing her career as an Independent Director Fiona served as the President and CEO of Southern Cross Cable Network, a submarine fiberoptic cable company connecting New Zealand and Australia to the USA.  She is a Past President of SubOptic, the global organization for submarine fiberoptic cables; the first woman to hold that title. Fiona was also Chair of the Telecommunications Group for America’s Cup Bermuda Ltd.- delivering key telecommunication requirements for the 2017 America’s Cup for which she was recognized in the Bermuda New Years’ honors list in 2017.

Appointed in January 2020 as Bermuda’s first Privacy Commissioner, Alex White supervises all Bermudian organisations for compliance with the Personal Information Privacy Act (PIPA). His work includes establishing the office and building the foundations for a successful data protection environment on the island.

Gavin is a Director of Earlsfort Group he has been involved in the development of commercial real estate and corporate workplace solutions for more than two decades. He is responsible for operations at East Point, a large, award winning office campus developed by Earlsfort back in the 1990’s. East Point is home to 50+ corporate occupiers including Oracle and Google. The occupiers employ close to 9,000 people. Pre-Covid they would show up to work at East Point every day.  The pandemic has transformed how people work and these days Gavin spends a good deal of his time speaking with the stakeholders to try to read the tea leaves as to the future of work and how it relates to the built environment, specifically the workplace and office. Gavin is father of 5 kids ranging in age from under 2 to 18 and is obsessed with health & fitness.  Gavin is hyper curious about human behaviour, personal development and leadership. He writes, speaks and mentors on the topic of real estate investment, innovation and impact with his own podcast Behind The Facade.

Brian Desmond is the EVP Head of Fund Services at Horseshoe Group (“Horseshoe”). He is in charge of the Group’s fund administration operations and responsible for all business development activities related to Fund Services.  Brian was one of the principal founders, a director and COO/CFO of Horseshoe Fund Services Ltd. (“HFSL”, formerly IKONIC), a fund administration company, acquired by Horseshoe in 2016.  Brian has over 25 years of fund administration and audit experience and prior to setting up HFSL, Brian was the Bermuda Country Head at Citigroup Fund Services (Bermuda) Ltd. where he was responsible for overseeing the fund accounting, shareholder services, audit and NAV preparation. for global clients. Brian is a Fellow Chartered Accountant (FCA) and acts as director of a number of offshore fund companies. He is also currently President of Teachers Rugby Club (Bermuda). James sits with Brian to discuss his career and successes  to-date.

Mitch Blaser has more than 40 years of accomplishments in international insurance markets and co-founded next-gen specialty insurer Mosaic, launched in 2021. Previously, Mitch joined Robert Clements as a founding executive to launch Bermuda-based Ironshore with $1 billion in private-equity capital in 2006 and helped drive its growth to become a global property & casualty insurer with over 800 employees in 15 nations. He held key roles during the company’s evolution, including COO of Ironshore Inc, CFO, and CEO of Ironshore Bermuda, and CEO of Iron-Starr Excess Agency and IronServe. In 2017, Ironshore was acquired by Liberty Mutual Group, and he became chief transformation officer. Formerly, Mitch was CFO for Swiss Re Americas, and part of the leadership team at Marsh Inc.

Derek is Affiliate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD. His interests include leadership development, burnout and resilience, the impact of emotionally demanding tasks on work groups. His research and practice in these areas are informed by a systems-psychodynamics approach that takes into account how group tasks, organizational structures and cultures are affected by, and affect, individuals’ experience at and of work. Derek works regularly in leadership development programmes for high potentials and senior executives at INSEAD, and has contributed to open and in-company executive Programs, as well as to the full time MBAs, at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, and at IMD in Switzerland. He has given input on the psychodynamics of organisations to the Clinical Psychology doctoral programme at Trinity College, Dublin. He also has a varied coaching and consulting practice, currently including individual work with corporate leaders and work with teams in the technology sector and in entrepreneurial ventures. Derek brings to all his work a particular focus on the personal benefits and costs of authenticity, effectiveness and success. He supports executives in developing functional approaches to self-care and resilience when dealing with jobs and tasks that require personal presence and intense emotional investment. Over the past decade, he has worked with corporations and executives in a wide range of sectors including construction, pharmaceuticals, fashion, technology and professional services. Prior to and alongside his work in executive education and development, Derek spent many years working as a Director in health care delivery. His particular area of expertise was child sexual abuse. He led a multidisciplinary team offering forensic and therapeutic services to vulnerable children and their families. His work in this arena taught him the importance of sound management and effective self-care in service delivery. Derek holds a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Trinity College, Dublin, and BA and MA degrees in Psychology from University College Dublin. He also trained at the Tavistock Clinic in London gaining a Masters in Organisational Consultancy. In 2011 he was granted the title of Honorary Associate Professor of the Institute of Work, Health and Organisation with the University of Nottingham. He consults regularly to group relations conferences in Europe and the United States. He is married and has three young sons. James sits with Derek to discuss his career journey.

This week's guest is David Ryan, Sales Specialist at Lamborghini Vancouver- Canada. David is a car-obsessed, former farmer from the West of Ireland who moved to Vancouver during Covid to realise his dream job of selling Super Cars for Lamborghini.

This weeks guest is David Ryan Sales Specialist Lamborghini Vancouver Canada. David is a car obsessed former farmer from the west of Ireland who moved to Vancouver during Covid to realise his dream job of selling Super Cars for Lamborghini. James sits with David to discuss his career journey and the importance of chasing your dreams.