Tell us a bit about your background – when did you do the program and what you are doing now?
I did the Washington Ireland Program in 2019. Now I am the Economic Specialist at the U.S. Embassy in Ireland. The role is quite diverse in its scope but in short I am the Irish economic advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, the Embassy, and the State Department and other agencies in Washington D.C. I have worked for two U.S. administrations and two Ambassadors so far. Before that, I worked for four years as the Senior Researcher and Economic Researcher at the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), Ireland’s main international affairs thinktank, and before that again I was elected to an 18-month term as President of Young Fine Gael, the youth wing of the Fine Gael party.
What was your stand-out memory of your Washington Ireland Program experience?
There is lots I could include here. WIP placed me in Senator Chuck Schumer’s office. One of my roles was to give tours of the stunning Capitol building and I had access to lots of the Capitol, so I have lots of memories getting lost in the Capitol and all of its amazing artwork and iconic sites. As Minority Leader at the time, the Senator’s office took calls from all over the country. I think some of the other interns understandably tried to avoid manning the phones, but I really enjoyed talking to people (no matter how angry some of them were!). It was a fascinating window into the United States as experienced by its citizens, and all of the hopes, fears, and challenges people were dealing with. I also got to have lunch with Senator Schumer near the end of my time in the office. Honestly though, I’d say the best memories were spent either with my wonderful host family, Joe Harkins and Antonia Chion, or with other members of the Program at various times. Joe and Antonia brought me to a theatre weekend in West Virginia to meet their wider family which was a lot of fun and emblematic of their deep generosity. WIP is a year-long program with a big social aspect so I really enjoyed the Corrymeela retreat where the class met for the first time as total strangers and spent a weekend together. In order to remember everyone’s names quickly we did a fun activity where everyone introduced themselves by saying their name and favourite place and the next person had to list every previous person in the chain’s name and favourite place. We had three Ellens so I still remember them as Ellen Berlin, Ellen Dublin and Ellen Lake Garda, as well as the class member who said the nightclub in Carlow!
What impact did WIP have on your leadership journey?
I think there are three things that come to mind here which have stayed with me: - One thing that struck me about all of the great people I met during the Program including the guest speakers at the speaker sessions was their positive attitude to risk. This was something that really made an impression on me given I would see myself as being naturally more cautious. I decided to take a leap and run for President of Young Fine Gael when I came home. Throughout my career I have also noticed it can be a lot easier to argue for the reasons to say no to things, so I make a conscious effort to find ways of arguing for yes. Along with this mindset on risk, the Program teaches you a lot about building resilience, so that when the risks you take don’t work out, you have the ability to bounce back stronger and learn from any mistakes. One of the best, and probably most underrated qualities in a leader in my view, is curiosity. I have found to date that it is very important to be able to listen carefully, look underneath the surface level, and seek out and challenge your surroundings to better understand any competing narratives, agendas, and motivations; to be able to ask the right questions to understand what is really going on. This is as true in policy analysis and diplomacy as it is in business, academia, civic society or elsewhere, and counterintuitively perhaps, it helps to build trust and avoids costly mistakes later on. During WIP, my host family made a conscious effort to leave both a conservative and a liberal newspaper on the counter for me to read in the mornings before going to work. A subtle but kind reminder to understand the different narratives, analyse them critically, and draw my own conclusions. Another common thread through the lives and careers of almost all of the people we met was that they pursued the things they were passionate about, as opposed to what others felt they should do with their lives. Economics, geopolitics, and policy have always been passions of mine, so it’s nice to be able to get up in the morning and not feel like I am “working”, since if I wasn’t in work, I would probably be reading about the things I am doing in work anyway!
How do you use the skills and experience that you gained on WIP in your role today?
Again three things come to mind here: An essential tenet of WIP is being able to deal with difference, both in terms of people and opinions. Some of the most valuable and interesting conversations I had during the Program were with people from Northern Ireland, many of whom came from different traditions to mine. I couldn’t honestly say that I had met or interacted with many people from Northern Ireland in a meaningful way prior to the Program so this opportunity was something I really valued. More broadly it taught me the value of understanding others’ points of view and the importance of cultural context. Diplomacy is all about being able to build relationships with people, many of whom are very different to you. I meet and discuss political and economic issues with American diplomats, politicians and business delegations from the reddest parts of the red states and the bluest parts of the blue states and everywhere in between. There is something valuable to be learned in every conversation. - While WIP was an amazing experience, it was definitely not relaxed. There was always something on, somewhere you needed to be, something that needed to be done, and only a finite amount of hours in the day and night. As a result, in terms of dealing with the pressure, it was very much sink or swim. In my role, there are always a lot of visitors, events, written tasks with competing deadlines, meetings and more. It is essential to have the ability to compartmentalise and shift your mind from one topic to another in minutes, as there could be two or three back-to-back meetings on very different issues requiring your full attention and input. The skill I learned in WIP to organise, prioritise, and adapt to different paces of work and life has stood me in good stead now to deal with high pressure scenarios and maintain poise and composure during challenging times. This is an important example to set for others in an organisation too when the pressure begins to take hold as it inevitably does at some point in one way or another. I consider myself to be a learned extrovert as opposed to a natural extrovert. In terms of where I draw my energy from, I definitely need some time to unwind after meeting lots of people at a time which my job requires me to do. WIP devoted a lot of time to helping people step outside their comfort zone and gave us the skills to develop meaningful personal and professional relationships. This is especially important for me now in my current role. Knowing who to call to find out the answer to something, who the Ambassador should sit down with, or who needs to be in the room for a meeting or event and being able to reach out to those people is at the heart of what I do. Also understanding the need for reciprocity in good professional relationships, to be able to give a little to get a little, is something WIP set me up well to do.
