Alison McMurtrie – iDunn Consulting
After an international career spanning almost 20 years, Alison McMurtrie completed her MBA through Warwick Business School. The MBA validated the skills she had acquired during her career, and helped provide the last piece of the puzzle to leave her role in the oil and gas industry and set up her own business.
Andrew Scannell – Clinks
Arriving back to his native Cork after 11 years in Australia, Andrew Scannell quickly identified the convenience economy as an area in which Ireland is trailing the rest of the world.
Anna O’Grady – Dogwood Designs
Anna O’Grady, a teacher from Gurteen in Co Sligo, originally left Ireland in 2002 to go backpacking in Australia with a group of other teachers.
Ciara Petty – Ciara Petty Design
Ciara Petty returned to Ireland after spending almost 10 years in London working in interior design and branding for a retail design agency, where she was design lead on hospitality and retail projects for clients in South Korea, America and across Europe.
Daniel Moylan – Overland Protection Systems
When the Covid-19 pandemic led to him having to close his successful international cycle tours business in Thailand, Daniel and his family decided to move to Waterford to start a new life and a new business.
David Cosgrave – Exam Performance Institute
Dr David Cosgrave, from Marlfield, Clonmel in Co Tipperary, returned to Ireland from Abu Dhabi in 2020 to set up his business, the Exam Performance Institute, in Clonmel.
Declan Treanor – Performance Treanor
A year working as a business consultant was enough for Declan Treanor to realise that the corporate world wasn’t for him.
Emily Horgan – E Horg Media
Emily Horgan had been taking tentative steps towards setting up her own media consultancy for children’s television when she finally called time on her 12-year spell in London.
Grace Quinn – The Classic Mother & Baby Company
The arrival of her second child signalled both the end of Grace Quinn’s 10-year career in oil and gas and the beginning of her journey as an entrepreneur dealing in high-end hospital bag bundles and gift sets for new and expectant mothers.
JP Garvin – GDI Ventures
JP Garvin, from Ballina in Co Mayo, was working in the oil and gas industry in Mayo when an opportunity came his way to move into the renewable energy sector in the UK in 2015.
Kim Whyte – Pawpear
With a BA in Graphic Design from the Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD), Kim Whyte, a native of Youghal, Co Cork, had been working as a designer for an east Cork print house, when she decided to move to London in 2010 to pursue creative opportunities.
Rachel Forbes – House of EQ
Rachel Forbes’ journey from the cut-and-thrust world of international finance to founding the House of EQ, a start-up based on boosting self-awareness through sensorial stimulation, is not as unlikely as it may seem.