Episode 12

What do you want to be known for? It's a deceptively simple question that often meets with sighs and thoughtful pauses. In this special episode, five remarkable individuals share what shaped their professional paths, offering us a mirror to examine our own daily actions and the ripples they create.

A farm girl turned global connector. A philosophy student navigating the complexities of AI. A solicitor who turned "you can't" into fuel for success. A relationship builder who transforms communities. A tech leader whose greatest achievement is seeing others soar.

Through their reflections, we discover that legacy isn't something we leave behind - it's something we're building in every conversation, every choice to lift others up. Their stories remind us that we're all crafting our legacy, whether we realise it or not, one ordinary day at a time. And we are all products of legacies already built.

In this episode we meet:

• Alexandria (Alex) Arbuckle, Managing Director of Level10. Level10 is empowering startups to 10x their impact and take their venture to the next level with fractional expertise. 

• Daniel Mccrea, Head of Partner Services at Adaptemy. Adaptemy helps some of the world’s leading education companies create intelligent and adaptive learning products. 

• Marie Maguire, Senior Legal Counsel (Employment EMEA) at Shein. SHEIN is a global online fashion and lifestyle retailer. 

• David (Dave) Farrelly, Head of Membership Services at Learnovate. Learnovate supports and enables organisations to unlock the transformative power of learning using applied research, innovative practices and cutting-edge technology. 

• William (Bill) Ryan, Director of Enterprise IT, EMEA at Shein and previously Senior End User Support Manager for EMEA at Verizon Business. 

Join us for an intimate exploration of how our daily actions create ripples that touch lives in ways we might never imagine. This is a story about the power of being present in this and every moment.

Alexandria (Alex) Arbuckle: My name's Alexandria Arbuckle.

Daniel Mccrae: My name is Daniel Mccrae.

Marie Maguire: My name is Marie Maguire.

Dave Farrelly: My name is Dave Farrelly.

William (Bill) Ryan : My official name is William Ryan, but everybody calls me Bill.

Belinda Brummer (host): What do you want to be known for? It's a deceptively simple question that often meets with sighs and thoughtful pauses. When I posed this question to leaders through throughout season one of the Manager's moment, the most common first response was, gosh, I've never really thought about that. Yet these same leaders spoke effortlessly about the influences that shaped their own journeys. Teachers who opened doors, parents who instilled values or inner drives that pushed them past barriers. The American writer Annie Dillard once wrote, how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. And through these conversations, I discovered that legacy isn't just about grand gestures or conscious intentions. It's woven into our daily choices, our small kindnesses, our, uh, quiet examples. In this special episode, five remarkable and yet everyday individuals share what shaped their professional paths, offering us a mirror to examine our own daily actions and the ripples they create. Because whether we've thought about it or not, we're all already building our legacy one ordinary day at a time. Join me as we hear their stories and perhaps discover something about our own journey along the way. This is the Manager's moment and I am your host, Belinda Brummer.

Alexandria (Alex) Arbuckle: My name is Alexandria Arbuckle and I am, um, speaking to you today from my small farm in rural Indiana. I am, um, a community builder and a connector. I create access for those who need it. So I run level 10, which connects early stage startups with fractional expertise and support to overcome their biggest challenges. I host intimate, creative dining experiences that build community and, uh, drive innovation. And I also run a small animal rescue here on the farm in Indiana. I believe in creating a life that works for you. I moved to London and made London home several, uh, years ago. And I'm very much based in London. But when I made the decision to move to London for personal reasons and for work reasons, I still had animals stateside who I had adopted and given help to. And unfortunately, due to legal reasons in the uk, you know, was unable to bring them with me. I believe that I'm an unstoppable idea machine. So when I'm faced with a challenge or, um, with a problem, I try and get really creative and think, okay, how can I solve this to the best of my ability? And it turns out the answer is splitting my time. So I split my time right now between the UK and rural Indiana. It's the small farm where I grew up. And so I have a number of rescue animals here. And what I found is that doing this really gives me the best of both worlds. I get to go to London and order delivery and, uh, go out and go to the theatre and go networking and I be in the midst of everything and then I come back here and I see all the stars at night and listen to the wind and the trees and, uh, look out across the wide fields. And I think both are really good for my soul and I think both actually enable me to be a really impactful entrepreneur because I'm not just seeing one perspective of the world, I'm seeing many. I think even five years ago, if you would've asked me what I did, I wouldn't have said I'm a community builder, though at that point I was. I built a career in human resources, although I don't really like the term human resources, but in that role you are building community. You're building community within an organisation and outside of work. I began hosting dinner parties with friends to build community. I've moved a lot. I've lived in many, many cities around the world. And one of the things I found is that one of the best ways to build relationships, to make friends, to network and build connections, is to sit around on the dinner table with somebody. So that's what I started doing, partially to make friends when I had moved to a new city and was hosting really interesting dinner parties. But I think where it all comes from is, you know, we talked a little bit about m. My splitting my time between rural Indiana and central London. And when you grow up in a place like rural Indiana and you're quite ambitious in the ways that I was and still am, um, you realise a lot of things about barriers to access. You are not only quite geographically isolated, but, uh, depending on the kind of connections that you want to be making from a business perspective, you may not have some of those natural connections or the access to those connections to be able to do the things that you want to do. And so I think I began thinking from a very young age, really intentionally, about community, about connection, and about the impact that accessibility to those connections in that community can have. I think they say when you don't have it, you build it. Right. And so I think my community building very much came from a place of understanding barriers to access and also understanding the power that the building community can have. I think people in rural communities and in small communities, I think they absolutely understand the impact of community. Because when you are, I don't want to say isolated, but when you are in a bit of a bubble, that community becomes incredibly important. And growing up, if somebody passes away or has a family issue, a big way that people here show community is through food, right? So if somebody has a family member that passes away, you better believe you're going to get a bunch of knocks at the door with people delivering casseroles or baked dishes or corn and green beans or whatever people need. And so there is a lot of that community here and a lot of that community comes from food, which I don't think is strange because it's a quite an agrarian area, but the outside world. My father was an engineer in the automobile industry and he travelled extensively for work globally. And so I grew up looking at the globe to see where my father was going. Some of my earliest memories were, and this is, you know, before cell phones and before you had Internet in this part of, part of America. I would go to the library and I would look up a dictionary or a translation book in the language of whatever country my father happened to be in at the time. And they didn't always have them because the rural library didn't have a Thai dictionary or that sort of thing. But, but I would, I would go and I would look up a, uh, translation book in the language of whatever country he was in. And then I would call his hotel and try and speak in the language of wherever he was at to ask for his hotel room. But it was something that's quite simple. You know, you ask the name, the room number, but I think for me that very much laid a foundation of there is so much more in this world than just this small town community. And I think as a young person, um, you know, particularly young person, I think I didn't always see the value of my small rural community. And it wasn't until I left and I lived in some of the big famous cities that I started to really see the value of that small town community. And for me it's now, I don't want to say having the best of both worlds, but I think both experiences offer so much and I feel incredibly blessed to be able to, um, experience both. So I spoke a little bit about my father and my father used to say that no matter where he went in the world, all anyone wanted was for their children to have a better life than they had. When I think about the kind of impact that I want my community building to have, I want to be creating places where people believe not only that things are Possible, but that help generate the opportunities for those dreams to become real and to be inspiring work or inspiring innovation that has a positive impact on people in the planet. The foundational pieces of community building have very much come from my small rural upbringing. Right. And experiencing community here. Whereas you know, my father, it was a bit strange that he travelled for work from here. I remember when I was in school I would bring back things that my father would bring back from his travels and the kids thought it was a bit weird. It was a bit strange because he was going and travelling and doing these things and I'm not typical of someone from this place. Most people, you know, most of my friends who, who I went to school with, they still live in the community and are raising their children here. And I remember there was one point where we were having um, a catch up and, and I was showing them my life on Google Maps, right. Here's where I go to brunch, here's where I, where I live and the walks that I take and, and that sort of thing because it's such a quite literally foreign concept to, to a lot of these people who are content to create home in the same place where maybe their grandparents created home. I think there is beauty in creating home in the same place that your uh, grandparents created home. And there is also beauty in chasing the sunrise or the sunset. For me I very much feel the pull towards both. Right. I love chasing the sunrise or the sunset and probably always will and I want to give other people the access and the opportunity to chase that sunset or that sunrise, whatever that means for them. Whether it means they're working on life saving and life changing technological and medical advancements and they need access to the people and the resources to help them do that. Whether it means they have just landed in a new city and are looking for connections and community and whether it means you're someone who is living in the same small town where your grandparents lived, but maybe you're curious about the world far away and you want to be able to learn about and experience different parts of the world.

Daniel Mccrae: My name is Daniel Mccrae. My role right now is in Adaptemy. I'm head of Partner Services and what that requires is really overseeing the implementation of all of our projects for our partners in Adaptemy So the project execution, contributing to the strategy for the company, being the voice of the customer and the organisation. Really what I do is understand and break down and interrogate complex ideas. So artificial intelligence is a really broad field and it's an area that there's quite a wide variance in understanding. So some people are quite evangelistic about it. I'm sure you've seen those characters. And then some people conversely are very cautious. And uh, some of them would. So really what my role is, is to break down complex concepts around AI in such a way that every member of the team understands what they're doing, how AI works, how they can contribute to it, how they can inspect it, understand it, and ultimately how they can use it in a trustworthy way. So a lot of what I do is around that idea of breaking complex ideas down into more understandable notions that people can really act on. It really all began when I was in secondary school, when I was about 18 years old. I was in my English class and my English teacher at the time said, Daniel, uh, you're really interested in debates and arguing ideas and exploring things. Have you heard about this thing called philosophy? And he recommended me a book on, let's say very introduction, Basic Principles of Philosophy. And as I was reading it I was really quite profoundly overwhelmed by the sense that there were other people out there who for hundreds of years, in some cases thousands of years, have been thinking about the same things I had. And uh, had been grappling with these complex ideas and doing a much better job of it than an 18 year old English student had. So I really felt that a sense of joining this big tradition about tackling complex ideas, the big questions that govern our society and our nature. I think a lot of people go through that in the teenage years, but I was really fortunate that somebody introduced this idea of philosophy. So then I did my graduate studies and my postgraduate studies in philosophy as well. And really how does that relate to where I am now? A lot of what I do is being able to understand complex systems and complex ideas, to interrogate the assumptions underneath them, to see do the conclusions follow from the premises and to really grapple with these quite complicated ideas in a way that I could communicate to ordinary people. That has proven to be extremely useful in AI because AI is one such complex idea. So that's really the genesis of how I ended up working in this role. And um, in this field, I suppose maybe more specifically I was really lucky to have been at a great company, Heldenmuth and Harcourt, which is big educational publisher in Dublin and America. And I was the content project manager for the very first adaptive learning AI product that they built that is going back to maybe 2012, 2011. So 12, 13 years ago at 12 maybe is when uh, I first came across this whole idea of Hang on a second. You can change the way courses work to meet individual people's abilities and needs and attitudes. Really, it was just a lightning moment, so I'd never seen anything like it. And, uh, yeah, really exciting project. That's how I got started on AI.

Belinda Brummer (host): Daniel, we have many teachers growing up and many teachers have lots of ideas and share lots of things with us. What about this English teacher that suggested philosophy made you as an 18 year old, actually listen and actually do something with that?

Daniel Mccrae: Firstly, he was responsible for the highest, um, English class. So we had different streamed classes for the leaving search. And so I was fortunate to get promoted up to the highest class. So I kind of joined his class a little bit late. And he was just. People aren't so complex, Belinda. A little bit of encouragement, a little bit of feedback, a little bit of extra attention. And those were the things that he really made me kind of believe that I could write interesting work, that I really understood the material that I was studying, that I was good at arguing, maybe a little bit too good at arguing, but I was at a team. And so I think just that kind of encouragement and the freedom to be who you were and express yourself in a way that was constructive, in a way that was impactful and funny and just that freedom to kind of express yourself a little bit and not only express yourself and not have your wings clipped, but actually to have a part of you encouraged. That was one dynamic in our relationship that was really impactful to me. It was unique for me because Lynn, you know me, not, not maybe the smallest personality, so quite extrovert, quite outgoing. And I guess he, for me, he found a way for me to channel that in a way that I could express myself who I was and get rewarded for it with good grades and trips to debating classes and to be nominated for this for the mun. Whatever the kind of minor little accolades along the way are as you move.

Belinda Brummer (host): Through the rest of your career. Daniel, what lays ahead of you in however long, 10, 20, 30 years time when you're at the end of your career and you look back, what is it you want to be known for?

Daniel Mccrae: I think a little bit early to be thinking about legacy. I'm, um, like I'm in the thick of it now, let's say to project forward and to have a goal to move towards. I guess two things really. One is trustworthiness. So I want to be remembered as somebody who was honest and fair in their dealings with people that was reliable. If I say that something gets done, it gets done. And, uh, that dependability and reliability is so critical to relationship building. I think when I started my career, when I was young, I. I suppose, like many people, Belinda, I thought that you could systematise and operationalize your way through any situation and any career. And I very quickly realised that it is the relationships that you build with people and the trust and the reliability that is the cornerstone of a functioning relationship. You can't gant your way out of a problem. You need to be a person somebody can trust and somebody who people can open up to and be honest about their own challenges and their own failings at a business level, at a personal level. And having that, uh, trust and reliability, I think, is something that I'd like to be remembered for, is a little bit lofty. But if one were to consider me, I'd like that to be one of the things they remembered. I think having a positive impact on the people around me. And again, that comes down to an emotional requirement as well. One of the most rewarding things is to see other people in the team do well and succeed and have success in their careers. It's hugely rewarding to see people that I've worked with in a kind of a junior capacity that I worked with closely, maybe mentor them a little bit along the way, and then to see their progress and their success and their careers move up and up and up. It's usually rewarding to be available to somebody to kind of help them move on and improve their life and improve their career, because I don't see your work as just a thing that you punch in at 9 to 5. It's so much more than that. And when your career is handled well and handled, um, carefully, it could be actually quite meaningful. And making work meaningful for others is a huge gift. And that's kind of what I mean about having positive impact on others.

Belinda Brummer (host): This is Belinda Brummer, your host. Did you know that The Manager's Moment has a sister podcast called Perfection's Antidote? In that podcast, Dr. Tracy Kite and I team up to ponder questions we've received from listeners about things they are grappling with at work. Like how do I deal with my suspicions of substance abuse in my team? And how do I deal with annoying behaviours in our group space? And even how do I manage an embarrassing confession? Each episode is less than 15 minutes and you're guaranteed to walk away with ideas and insights that will help if you're facing similar situations at work. Perfection's Antidote being real about the way we work.

Marie Maguire: My name is Marie Maguire. I am um, an employment solicitor. So I deal with employment law currently and in previous roles across all of Europe. Dealt with the US and currently concentrating on Europe, Middle east and Africa. I remember being told by a careers advisor at my school and, um, my school wasn't the one that had the greatest of aspirations. I remember saying, you know, I wanted to be a doctor or a teacher. And I remember the careers advisor distinctly saying, you should probably rethink that and maybe be a secretary or something. And nothing wrong with being a secretary at all. But I remember getting really annoyed by this careers advisor and it annoyed me and I just thought, right, you know, what am I going to do? And I think as well, I was always encouraged by my dad to sort of, you know, uh, get out there, do, do what you think you'll enjoy doing. And I always had this kind of, I don't know, this thing about fairness and sort of want equality. And I had all this grand idea as I got into my teenage years about actually the law. You know, let's go and fight the good fight. Um, I always thought, I like the sound of that, and I decided to do law and the rest sort of followed, really. And it's been through a lot of bloody hard work because I've certainly not had handouts along the way. I'm the first person in my family to go to university. Both my parents working class, sort of construction background my dad was in, my mum didn't work, but my dad was the one who was like, you know, you get on there, you can, you can do stuff. Yeah. So I think that was the thing. I'm quite stubborn. My view is that if I'm gonna do something as sod everyone, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get on and do it. So I'm stubborn and once I put my mind to something, I decide I'm gonna do it as well. But yeah, it's that thing. I don't like being told no. If I'm told no, I sometimes double down and go, I'll show you. But it's the work ethic bit, I think, that was put into me by my dad, particularly, uh, if you work hard, you can do whatever you want despite, you know, despite your background, despite anything like that, you can, you put your head down and get on with it. And you, yeah, you can do whatever you want. What I always aim to be is someone who's just a good person to work with, someone who's always got people's back as well. I don't know, it's, it's It's a hard, it's a hard question. I know that sounds odd because it's one of those things where you sort of think, oh, you know, what, what do I want to be known for? Just being a decent, hard working person. That sounds a bit meh. But I think we sometimes forget, particularly as we get older, what's the most important things. And actually being a good friend, a good kid. So good parent to my two girls. They're just as stubborn and sassy as me. So I think I've done a good job even though they, they argue with me all the time. But I think it's, it's just being a bloody good person. I, you know, when it comes to end of the day, I think that's, that's the thing you want to be known as someone who is a good, ethical, a good laugh. My dad fortunately passed away about seven or eight years ago. I know it sounds silly, but again, you don't necessarily look at your parents really until they've gone. And one of the things after he died was just how many people just said what a good guy he was, what a nice bloke, what a bloody good job he did looking after. Well, I'm, um, one of five siblings, so he had his hands full with that because my dad looked after us just by himself. And I think at the end of the day actually it's your relationships that made the biggest impact on uh, how you leave the world as well. So, yeah, so I think that's probably who I look back to and go, actually, you know what, he, yeah, he had that impact on people, you know, where people go, what a bloody good person he was. I think that's pretty good epitaph to leave the world with.

Dave Farrelly: My name is Dave Farrelly. I am originally from Trim in County Meath and I still live in Trim. I moved back to trim about 17 years ago, back to the hometown and back to the homeland. I am, um, head of Membership Services in Learnovate. Learnovate is a research and innovation centre in Trinity College Dublin. My responsibility is to manage the relationship with all of our industry members and to ensure that they get the best value from the membership fee that they pay on an annual basis, particularly around the research that we output on the future of work and learning. We won Best Membership Services award at the association and um, institute awards of 2024. I suppose I ended up in education and learning, technology and gaming by chance. My background from an uh, education perspective is languages and business. So French, Spanish and business combined. That was my undergraduate degree and I did a master's in International Business in Trinity College Dublin in 2008, 2009. My role is very much relationship management, talking to people all the time and, um, having good conversations about getting the best value from research and innovation. I'm a big believer in relationships and having positive, passionate relationships from a professional perspective. Like, I think you need to be passionate about your subject matter that you're talking about all the time. And I'm passionate about education and learning and have a, I suppose, great advantage to get on very well with people all of the time, both socially, personally and professionally, and seem, um, to have a, uh, I suppose a trick, uh, up my sleeve in terms of how to speak to people, how to engage in people and just have good conversations and continue those good conversations. And I'm a big believer in the phrase, and you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. And I've always taken that approach. That's always been my mantra in terms of my approach to speaking to people, even in difficult conversations, even in tricky conversations, that you just need to be nice. There's. There's nothing wrong with being nice. I, uh, would like to consider myself as somebody that does not have an ego of any shape or form. And I think if you have an ego, you are challenging yourself in terms of the type of relationships that you build with people, because it will always go back to you as the person rather than the people that you're speaking to. So I suppose my objective in every conversation that I have is to provide the best service, the best support that I can to a member, to a client, to a strategic partner, to a, uh, government stakeholder, whoever it might be that I'm speaking to. So I think being egoless is important when it comes to having multiple relationships with multiple different people. From, From a professional perspective, I'm one of two boys. My brother and I are like chalk and cheese. And my brother would be very much the introvert and I'm very much the extrovert. I'm a super people person. Uh, I just love people. I, I see people as my hobby. If people ask, ask me, what, what's your hobby? It's like, people. I love spending time with people, I love socialising, I love spending time with friends, I love hanging out with people, going on holidays, going on trips, going on weekends, away, whatever it might be. And I get my energy from people. So I, I suppose, like, that's my energy source as such is people, you know, I live on my own and was challenged during the pandemic, living on My own in terms of not having access to as many of my people as I normally would. But I have a really great social network. I have a really great group of friends and family around me and a great group of professional people around me as well. So it's like people everywhere. I sometimes come back to my house just to hide for a little bit and get a little break. Not that I need money often I just need a good 12 hours sleep and then I'm back to normality in terms of wanting as many people around me as possible. So I'm a big socializer. I like to entertain. I love having people to my house. I love having dinner parties, I love throwing big crazy parties through a big crazy party for my 40th birthday, for my 50th birthday with hundreds of people at both. So, you know, I'm the person that people would say brings people together. And I, I suppose I do professionally, you know, managing a community, like Learnovate, what I do socially. So it, it doesn't really feel like a huge effort, if that makes sense. People thank me for bringing groups of people together on a regular basis. They're like, only for you, Dave. We wouldn't have seen this person in so long. And you know, all my college friends way back from Kevin street in 1994 when we graduated over 30 years later, 30 years this year, there's still a big group of us that are friends and they would say that we're all friends because of me, because I do the regular, let's get together, let's meet up, let's go away, come to my 40th, come to my 50th. And some of them don't see each other other than when I organise. Like I still have friends from my classes in school, my leaving cert gang that we all grew up together, we're all still friends. So I've got multiple sources of friendship. I would say. I was a holiday rep In Spain in 1995, I was a holiday rep in Menorca. I still have lots of friends from my holiday rep days. Um, I think that was a pivotal point in, in my career working as a holiday rep in terms of managing people and managing relationships, managing difficult guests, managing difficult conversations, but also gave me great confidence in terms of talking to people and presenting and communication to large crowds. Like I was only 21 at the time and I was at the top of a bus welcoming people from the airport and I was at the top of a hotel room welcoming people to the resort. You could have had a couple of hundred people. And I was literally thrown in at the deep end. And I always look back to that as being a really great experience in terms of entering the world of work, uh, and being given the confidence to speak to people, to present to people, to communicate effectively. Certainly want to be known as that person that brought people together for enjoyable experiences, whether it be socially, personally or professionally. But one thing particularly that I would like to be remembered for is the running of the ass quality campaign in Trim in 2015 for the marriage referendum. I set up the campaign in Trim, pulled together a group of volunteers, as I do ask people nicely. And um, we ran one of the best campaigns in the country and got amazing feedback on it in terms of events, in terms of awareness, in terms of the positivity of the message, the conversations, how, uh, it was managed, how it was executed. I was interviewed for the National Archives actually for how uh, the campaign was run in Trim. So I feel very proud of doing that for local young gay and lesbian people. You know, when I was 16, 17, growing up in Trim and gay, I didn't really understand who I was or what I was, who I was going to be, and was very concerned and nervous about my life at the time. But I wanted to do it for them that they wouldn't have that same feeling as I had when I was 16 or 17. So very, very happy to be remembered for the Ass Equality campaign and Trim. I have a big uh, straw case of all of the magazines, all of the campaign material, T shirts, flyers, everything that I have in my attic ready to be handed to somebody else to remember those times. It was a, uh, I suppose six week whirlwind of getting involved and it's my one and only touch point into any, any sort of politics. Uh, that's certainly one of, one of the key things that I would like to be remembered for. Another key thing that I'd like to be remembered for is my support for a trust called Join Our Boys Trust, a family in Roscommon. They have two little boys with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, which is a horrible muscle wasting disease and it's terminal. Unfortunately. One of the little boys has passed away from um, 16 years of age. The two other boys, 14 year old twins, are both in wheelchairs and we are desperately trying to find a cure for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. It's only mostly boys that get us. It's a, uh, it's a really horrible, horrible disease. And I came across this family, a beautiful family in Roscommon who Needed support and needed someone to help them with a fundraising campaign. Back in December 2022, I believe it was, maybe it was 21. So they asked me to help them with a campaign. I came up with a concept of the annual, uh, Christmas Present Day campaign. So a Christmas present for the boys on the 8th of December every year. And the first year that we ran the campaign it literally went viral. It went global and we raised nearly €300,000 for join our Boys Trust in that year. We had people in New York doing club calls, we had people in Australia making donations. It was just unreal. So I thought it was only going to be a once off like the, yes, the quality campaign in terms of getting involved. But I am booked on um, them now and I'm their volunteer raising manager and I, I support them voluntary on a monthly basis in terms of managing their fundraising activities. So I like to give something back particularly to children because I, uh, don't have kids myself, so really wanted to continue to help them. It's a joy to help them, although it's very sad as well in terms of the, the situation. So it's a balance between, you know, doing lots of great things to raise money but also raise awareness of this horrible illness as well. You know, another thing that I'd like to be remembered for and something I've done is left a legacy, uh, gift in my will for students in hardship situations in Trinity College Dublin, for somebody like myself that wouldn't necessarily came from a affluent background or had the financials to and complete my studies without the support of a part time job. But that's the support of some, you know, contribution from my parents who did what they could. But my parents did not go to third level or higher education. But they very much supported me in, in my decisions. I was always a lover of learning, of education and um, you know, I was the, the swat in the bedroom for five hours every evening studying for my leave. And sergeant, they just left me to it and went, he knows what he's doing. They went to the teacher, parent, parent teacher meetings and got glowing reports every time. So they were happy. So they knew I had my head screwed firmly on my shoulders in terms of getting my education and continuing my education. You can see here my four qualifications hung up behind me. My master's, my degree and two diplomas. So my dad always said to me, nobody can take your education away from you. And I really believe in that quote, like nobody can take your education away from you. It's in you, it's yours, yours to own. It's yours to take advantage of.

William (Bill) Ryan: My name is, my official name is William Ryan, but everybody calls me Bill. I'm the director of IT for Shein in EMEA. Essentially what that means is I have responsibility for all, uh, the technical requirements that the staff need, whether that be new offices, day to day support, or emerging technologies that we're looking to integrate into the business. They all fall under my team and we kind of review and deploy when needed. I've been doing this for almost 30 years now. As much as I hate to admit it, when I came out of college it was at the height of the dot com bubble. Things were starting to kick off. Facebook had just been invented. You know, it was at that level of thing. And I studied electrical engineering when I was in college. But I almost fell into information technology because there was such a demand in the market at the time and it was an easy one to get into. So I kind of moved into that. And what appealed to me about the technology and what we were all doing at the time was, you know, I consider myself a bit of a problem solver. I like challenges like that. I like things that kind of give me a head scratch. When you go back to Those like the 90s or the early noughties, a lot of technology was very new. People weren't as familiar with technology as they may be now. Clouds didn't exist, everything was on the desktop. So we had a lot of problems to fix and a lot of education to do. And that's really what appealed to me about the career that I pursued then afterwards. I've always had an interest in technology, even back going back into secondary school. And even as a child, you know, my parents would tell me stories that I had a habit of taking all my toys apart and putting them back together again to see how they worked. It was always something that appealed to me. And that's one of the reasons I went into electrical engineering when I went to university. The technology around that was visible everywhere, you can see it wherever you go. Everybody has electricity in their home, obviously, and distribution systems and all that. And that's why I went into electrical engineering and again because that was all piecing things together, figuring out problems, the mathematics behind it. And that always appealed to me. Ultimately my career went in a slightly different track in that I went in the information technology. And I haven't really done electrical engineering as a career and uh, subscription. But it's all technology to me. It's all, whether it's an electrical distribution system like the National Grid or It's a network that we're all connected in the office. I see it all as technology and it's the interconnectivity that appeals to me. My parents were always quite supportive. They knew I wanted to do a particular thing that involved technology and they always supported me for that. They supported me when I was going through university, when I told them I wanted to do a particular course and were applied for, it was never questioned beyond a, uh, are you sure that's what you really want to do? Okay then, great, let's do that. So, so my parents have, uh, I've been fortunate. They've always been very supportive towards my career and my general work. If I'm being perfectly honest, I think I was a bit of a, a slow starter moving into my career because I was very happy doing the level one, level two, day to day support and I fell into other aspects of my career almost by accident. And again I go back to saying it was at the time of the dot com bubble, everything was expanding. There weren't a huge amount of people moving into it at the time. So the opportunities were there. I saw them and I pursued them and I'd like to think it's worked out relatively successful for me so far. When uh, I look at my career and for the past 30 odd years, one thing that's always happened to me when I've gone to work somewhere, I've always moved into a leadership role. I've always led a team of some description. When I worked in the Dublin airport, I did that. You know, I worked in Shein, I did in Verizon, I did that. Uh, and leading of people, I've often said it can be both the most rewarding and frustrating thing in the world. I'd like people to look at me and say that if they discover they're going to be put onto my team, there won't be feelings of threat. You know, they say, oh, Bill has a reputation for being a good and a fair leader and encouraging us to move on. I often make, make a joke with some of the people on my teams and that my primary responsibility is to get them off my team. And um, what I mean by that is I want people to move up and you'll move into an area that they want to specialise in. That's possibly why a lot of my leadership roles that I've done over the years have always been at the level one, level two, the desk side and system admin support, because that's kind of an entry port for a lot of people when they move into it. You look at my current team at the moment, some of them have ambitions to move into, like, into infrastructure or into big data. And I'm, um, helping them and encouraging them to do that and trying to open their eyes up a little bit as to why I'm doing that. Because I get no better pleasure in seeing a really strong performer lead my team and then move on to a role that they're really excited about. I get almost excited, as they do. When I see that happen. I think it's fundamentally in my nature. I like to help, you know, I like to be useful to people, whether that's in my actual career or my personal life. I like to see myself as a useful person. I've done a lot of volunteering work in the community over the past number of years, particularly during COVID and lockdown. I was doing meals, deliveries and things like that to senior citizens. And to me, I just see that as being helpful. I think that's kind of driven me quite a lot in my career as well. I just want to be of use.

Belinda Brummer (host): We've come to the end of another episode of The Manager's Moment. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Alex, Daniel, Marie, Dave and Bill for sharing your stories and your time with us. And a special thanks to you too, Michael Arkins for your assistance with recording this episode. If you've enjoyed it, there are three things you could do. Let your friends and colleagues know about it, follow the show and be a part of the conversation and make connections by joining the Managers Moment Club on LinkedIn. The Manager's Moment is brought to you by Boost Learning. Boost Learning combines learning and talent development expertise with professional podcast production to turn voices into strategic communication to tools. Visit www.boostlearning.online to learn more about how we do this. The Manager's Moment - seeing the person in this and every moment.