Mary McKenna,
empowering female founders
07.07.22
BORN in County Tyrone,
Mary McKenna, MBE, has always been drawn to the North
West of Ireland. Shortly after being born her family
emigrated to Yorkshire where she was brought up. Many
“happy school holidays” were spent with their
grandmother in Inishowen and a strong connection to
Donegal was built. Mary tells us about her career,
AwakenHub and the potential being realised by enterprise
within the North West.
Now residing in the fishing village of Greencastle, Mary
calls the North West her base; “After years of city life
in London, it really does feel like heaven.”
Starting her professional career as a corporate
accountant, Mary left her role to start Derry based
Learning Pool, with her business partner back in 2006.
The Learning Pool platform brings online learning to
organisations in a collaborative way, with 5.1 million
active learners worldwide.
“The North West is a great place to start and grow your
business”, comments Mary. “The talent coming from our
universities (ATU Donegal & Ulster University, Magee) on
both sides of the border, the proximity to the EU and UK
market, the start-up supports available from both
governments, the excellent real estate and the high
quality of life that we all enjoy, are the region’s key
selling points and why I loved scaling my business from
here.”
Setting up a tech business in the North West is actually
very easy according to Mary. “The FDIs are still present
but they’re less dominant today. Now, the local tech
scene is younger, more female, less formal, more global,
well-educated, informed and definitely ambitious. A lot
of newer founders have lived away from Ireland for a
while but are electing to return home, settle down and
build a business here.”
Since selling her Learning Pool stake in 2014, Mary has
focused her career as an angel investor and innovation
expert.
In 2020, Mary co-founded AwakenHub, along with 4 other
women, Clare McGee, Mary Carty, Sinead Crowley and
Denise McQuaid. AwakenHub is a community for Irish
female founders and it provides a learning and mentoring
environment for women who are starting businesses that
they intend to scale from day 1. |
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Mary McKenna, on the far
left, with members of the AwakenHub team in Dublin. |
The motivation to create
the social enterprise came from the goal of “making
strong and successful female role models much more
visible to younger females.”
Mary explains “Since we started almost 2 years ago 2,000
women have engaged with us and attended our online
monthly events. We’re currently running Ireland’s only
cross-border accelerator, SheGenerate, for a cohort of
56 women.
We’re also about to launch our AwakenAngels investment
community for angel investors interested in backing
Irish female founders.” These programmes help the
All-Ireland network to nurture and develop female
founders to help accelerate their business to the next
level.
The group has recently appointed Mary Ann Pierce as
their new Global Diaspora Ambassador, helping to
strengthen ties between the social enterprise and
diaspora, as well as attracting inward investment into
the female founders.
Scanning through Mary’s LinkedIn, one can see she
juggles her work at AwakenHub with many other roles. In
2018, she became an Expert Advisor to the EU Commission
on MedTech, EdTech, Pharma, ICT and Advanced Computing.
She also enjoys her role as mentor with the University
of Oxford, entrepreneur in residence with Catalyst and
non-executive directorship with the Millennium Forum and
Mind of My Own, to mention a few!
“Only about half of what I do is listed on LinkedIn. I
love everything that I’m involved in these days and that
makes it less like work and more like fun. Keeping a lot
of plates spinning is certainly a challenge but I’m a
people person and I love the variety that my wide range
of business interests brings me.”
Joking on her busy lifestyle, Mary says “years ago when
people asked me where my office was, I used to point at
my handbag and that hasn’t changed!” The hectic
lifestyle and wealth of experience makes her the perfect
ambassador for entrepreneurs.
Getting started is the key when starting up your
business according to Mary. “A lot of people wait until
something is perfect and you know what they say …
perfect is the enemy of good. There’s so much
uncertainty with a new startup and there’ll be so many
pivots and tweaks that you end up making, that it’s
better not to delay and waste time. Just get started and
you’ll figure it out as you go along. My favourite
saying about entrepreneurship is “leap and a net will
form”.
When asked what advice she would give to upcoming
entrepreneurs, Mary’s favourite is a Steve Jobs quote
stating, “I'm convinced that about half of what
separates the successful entrepreneurs from the
unsuccessful ones is pure perseverance”.
In Mary’s view ‘’persistence and resilience are great
qualities in an entrepreneur” Given her experience and
success, these are qualities worth noting for any
entrepreneur. |
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