We thoroughly enjoyed the event and came away with lots of insights, hints, and tips. We thought we would take this opportunity to share each of our 3 Big Learnings with you.

Baz’s closing remarks after interviewing Katie Piper at the AWG last week were ‘give it up for the resilient and brilliant Katie Piper’. Absolutely true.

Katie Piper is a former model / TV presenter, who was beaten, raped and viciously attacked with sulphuric acid to her face by her boyfriend and his friend in 2008. She was left partially blind, with severe damage and scarring to her face, chest and upper body.

250 plus surgeries later, reconstruction, skin grafts, and an emotional roller-coaster journey to recovery, Katie’s story is one of resilience, openness and her amazing ability to move beyond what happened. Katie still does TV work, is a best-selling author, and has set up The Katie Piper Foundation with Simon Cowell – a charity to help fellow burns victims, and she was awarded an OBE for her charity work.

Some of her many inspiring pieces of advice….

• Live in the present. You cannot change the past. Worrying about the future creates anxiety. Connect in the present tense.
• You only live once.. get it right!
• Identity is found through purpose.. find your Why!

Suzanne Jackson is an award-winning blogger turned businesswoman. Suzanne is the creator of the blog SoSueMe, founder of Sosucosmetics and Drippinggold.

3 Big Learnings:

• Manifest and visualise what you want
• It’s how you speak to yourself and who you surround yourself with
• Look good and feel good, get the hair done and put on a nice outfit

Suzanne is inspired by Georgia Crawford!

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Carolan Lennon was the first woman to take the helm of Ireland’s largest telecoms operator and has been the CEO of Eir since 2018. Carolan is now joining the customer relationship management company Salesforce Ireland as country leader from July 2022. We were delighted that Carolan was part of the platform at the EWG. It was a pleasure to hear from one of Ireland’s most successful business leaders in recent times as she shared her journey to date and her plans for future leadership success.

There were many great inspirational insights from Carolan’s talk at the EWG, she gave up to date statistics on the position of women in the workforce in Ireland today, such as:

• 50.35% of the Irish population are women and only one in eight is a CEO
• Boards now have a female representation of 12% – up from 7%
• The gender pay gap is still 11%

The big three learnings for me from Carolan’s talk are:

• Lead with a value-based leadership approach: always lead by example and believe in the trickle-down effect
• Always watch the energy in the room: the way to motivate your people is to focus on problem solving and creativity not the problems, do not be a negative spectator
• Focus on the outcome and do not care who gets the credit

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Deborah Somorin is an amazing and resilient young woman who shared her life story with us. She talked about the many challenges she faced as a young girl in the Irish system of care, as a young single mother trying to make a better life for herself and her child through education, and much more. It was truly inspirational to listen to her life story and see how her experiences have shaped her life today. Deborah has a master’s in accounting and in 2018, founded a not for profit called Empower the Family (ETF). ETF provides student accommodation, in Dublin, with onsite quality childcare for single parents between 18-23 attending university.

I was very inspired by Deborah’s resilience and will keep in mind the following:

• Never give up, even when faced with the impossible
• The system does not help, but the people in the system are courageous, and caring and go beyond their call of duty, every day and in every situation
• Get creative to find a solution and use your network, exhaust every avenue (even when you think there is no other way forward)

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Georgie Crawford is a Health Coach & Wellness Speaker. She is the producer and host of Ireland’s leading health and wellbeing podcast, founder at The Good Glow Health & Wellness, and a Breast cancer survivor and cancer screening advocate. Georgie’s speaker topic was: ‘Rise & Thrive – creating inner belief and confidence’. My 3 Big Learnings from Georgie’s interview were:

• Give yourself 1% more in your day
• Allow the stillness in – with it comes guidance
• You have a right to change your mind about who you are

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I am always so proud to be Irish when listening to such a legend as Kellie Harrington. We have some remarkable sports influencers that inspire youth and women’s boxing. Kellie is a health care worker who married in April. She grew up in the inner city and boxing gave her focus and pulled her out of going down the wrong road…

Kellie is an Olympic Gold medallist and left me with these three motivational thoughts:

• Resilience – Keep knocking on doors… try try and try again
• Have fun and enjoy challenges
• Rest and Recharge

Kellie is very passionate about perseverance and not letting what you want to be doing pass you. She has proven this methodology truly works once you have the ambition to keep trying!

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A Vice President of Digital Sales EMEA at Microsoft Lisa Dillon talked to us about the Microsoft Leadership Principles and her own leadership style and what works for her. She shared 3 key features of her style of leadership as:

• Optimism and self-belief are key
• Focus on what you can control
• Grit – passion and perseverance

She quoted Satya Nadella the CEO of Microsoft ‘Care is the new currency’.

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Best known to me as the author of her highly successful book ‘The Fix’, Deborah King is a global expert on culture and equality at work. Aswell as being an author, she is a podcast host, writer, TEDX speaker and thought leader who helps companies and leaders build belonging at work. A lot of what Michelle talked about resonated with me and will stay with me. The following 3 things were particularly interesting to me:

• Fix workplaces not women
• Strive for a workplace that values you just as you are
• We each experience the workplace in a different way to others

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I am going to share what I learned from Roxie Nafousi the queen of Manifesting. Best known for her remarkably successful book ‘The Manifest’. I was curious and a little sceptical about the concept of manifesting but excited to understand how manifesting had helped Roxie turn her life around in such a relatively short period of time. Roxie kindly shared her 7 steps and lots of useful tools and thoughts about self-development. There was lots to choose from but 3 simple but powerful thoughts stood out for me:

• Finding excuses for not making positive change is a form of self-sabotage
• Roxie shared a saying that will stick with me ‘A grateful heart is a magnet for miracles’
• Turn envy into inspiration

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