Irish Australian Business Awards Peoples Choice 2019

I think I would be a worthy winner of an Irish Australian Business award because of the difference I have made and continue to make to people’s lives through my professional work, human rights work and community volunteering.

In my current role as a Senior Legal Counsel at First State Super, one of Australia’s largest superannuation funds with almost $100 billion in funds under management, I help our members save for their futures. Given the size of the Fund, I help First State Super’s positive impact on the environment and the community through impact investing. I was recognised for my contribution to the superannuation industry when the Premier of New South Wales Gladys Berejiklian presented me with one of the four Women in Super/Australian Graduate School of Management Leadership scholarships in 2017. I am an active member of Women in Super and support the ‘Make Super Fair’ policy.

My human rights work includes: researching crimes in Sri Lanka, which contributed to a submission by the International Crimes Evidence Project to the United Nations on the impunities in Sri Lanka; helping a significant number of refugees with their safety visa applications to remain in Australia supporting the Refugee Advice & Casework Service; and mentoring teenagers from a disadvantaged school in Sydney and contributing to their growth and development. Being able to help all of these people has been one of the most satisfying parts of my career. As a result, in a video for University College Dublin on International Women’s Day in 2018, I encouraged students to participate in human rights work.

I am actively involved in the community in Australia being a volunteer lifesaver and patrol member at North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club. I love to be able to give back to the community doing something I am passionate about having started lifesaving in Ireland as a teenager and also teaching swimming for years. I also actively contribute to the Irish Community in Sydney as the Chapter Lead of the UCD Alumni Sydney and co-organiser of the first financial services panel event, and as a mentor in the Irish Australian Chamber of Commerce mentoring program last year.

I feel like I developed the resilience to be able to make these contributions through my training and hard work to achieve the minimum qualifying standard for the Olympics in sport. The learnings I gained from representing Ireland have been instrumental in helping with the contributions I am making through my professional life, human rights work and community volunteering.

When asked why I would be a worthy winner of this award, David Midolla, Head of Legal and Compliance, Fidelity International outlined that:

“I think that Ciara’s hard work, dedication and commitment make her an outstanding representative of the legal profession and the financial services industry. Ciara has a strong sense of community, justice and giving back which is evidenced by her extensive work in the pro bono area and is typical of Ciara’s Irish culture and heritage.”

I believe I would be a worthy winner of an Irish Business Award for a number of reasons even though I do not work for a commercial entity... Firstly, I have played a significant role in a city-shaping infrastructure project in Victoria working for the Victorian Government on the West Gate Tunnel Authority.  Secondly, I am a major contributor in the Irish community in the administration of Gaelic Games. This year I have served as Vice-President to Australasia GAA, Victoria GAA and also President of my club in Melbourne; Garryowen.

These roles are all on a voluntary basis. Under my stewardship, Victoria GAA hosted one of the greatest Australasian Games in recent history. I acted as Project Manager for the games themselves which involved 900 players playing a series of games in Melbourne in a 4 day period. The Irish ambassador also attended the games and I helped secure his attendance.

Finally, I also founded and host a gaelic games podcast called G'Day GAA which focuses on gaelic games in Australia and also key events back in Ireland. This podcast has garnered over 21,000 downloads in 2 years. 

I moved to Brisbane from Tyrone in 2011 and quickly recognised the excellent career opportunities and amazing lifestyle Queensland had to offer.

I joined GraysOnline in 2015 as a Business Development manager in the Industrial Division- the first female Business Development Manager hired in that division as typically those roles and senior management roles are held by men.  My role initially involved building a solid customer base in QLD for supply to industrial auctions. I have dedicated time into building strong client relationships in the QLD region organizing auctions and valuing equipment to purchase or sell.

In FY18 I sourced more than $25m worth of surplus Civil and Industrial Equipment. This equipment was sold through our online auction channel and through some Major Simulcast auction events.
In my four years working for GraysOnline I have grown professionally and personally. I have developed a wide range of skills. I now assist mentoring junior staff with equipment valuations and sale strategies.
Earlier this year I moved into a new role as National Head of Corporate Partnerships. This role involves working closely with several companies whom we have national partnerships with. This role has allowed me to seize my entrepreneurial spirit and create new income streams for our industrial business. These include various marketing strategies and lead generation initiatives to our vendors, developing a national internal sales team and purchasing equipment and seeking equipment consignments from overseas customers.

In August 2019 I was appointed a place on our Senior Leadership Team for Grays Online.  In 2019 I have taken part in The Emerald roundtable program through the Irish Australian Chamber of Commerce. This roundtable has been integral in my personal growth. Once a month we meet and discuss various business challenges with other emerging leaders in their chosen business we focus on building each other’s strengths stretching ourselves to create new opportunities. This group has also provided me with personal support working in a male dominated field.

I believe I am a worthy candidate for this award as I have a relentless attitude towards professional success. I am dedicated to self-educating and learning from more experienced businesspeople.
I aspire lead by example in the auction industry and I am willing to put in the hard work to gain the knowledge to do so. I want to help inspire other young professionals that there is no limit on where you can take your career opportunities.

I arrived in Brisbane in April 2011 having decided to take a year out from my job in Ireland. In Ireland, the automotive industry was on its knees with the lowest annual vehicle sales ever in the preceding year, and many businesses were shutting down.

My first task was to find a job, and I was fortunate enough to get the first one I applied for. It was with the Norris Motor Group – Volkswagen, selling new vehicles. It was totally different from selling in Ireland, moving from a market of 100k to 1 million vehicles annually. The automotive industry in Australia is also much more regulated than in Ireland. I began by applying for a motor salesperson registration. Once I had acquired this, I had to learn quickly on the job.

After my first year I progressed to a position within the group as used vehicle manager at their Nissan and Hyundai franchise. This was my first experience of management, I had to develop many skills including leadership and communication. 


 

I was fortunate to be part of a very strong leadership team including the owner of the group and my dealer principal who helped me settle into the position. I married my Australian born wife in 2015, and we decided to relocate to Melbourne that same year, primarily for family reasons.

I have been a member of the Irish Chamber of Commerce since I moved to Melbourne in 2015. Last year I enrolled in the mentoring program and was matched with Carl Walsh. To get one on one-time with such an accomplished business professional, with vast experience has been priceless. I have made some excellent connections through the chamber including last year’s young entrepreneur winner Andrew Harte (Eire Workforce) and Deirdre O’Donoghue from (LeasePlan Australia).

I love living and working in Australia, but I also cherish my Irish culture and heritage. I believe that in winning an award such as this would boost my confidence not only to push forward with my career but most importantly to also do what I can to advance the alignment of values, the partnering of opportunities and the encouragement of friendships between these two great countries

I do everything with passion and a sense of a greater purpose. I am incredibly driven to change the way we interact with our natural environment. I work in the field that I do because to move a mountain you need to start with the big rocks. Buildings contribute to 40% of our greenhouse gas emissions, use up to a third of our natural resources, and produce 40% of our solid waste. We work in buildings, sleep in buildings, are entertained, educated, and fed in buildings, but often think of them as static things that are merely the backdrop to our lives. The floor you walk on, the window you look out, the chair you are sitting on all took an incredible amount of resources and energy to get there.

I believe one of the keys to a better environment is better buildings, and better buildings are built on better decisions, and better decisions are made with better information. The unique work that I do provides very powerful and tailored information regarding the impacts of a supply chain as complicated as a building. Empowered by this we are able to ensure that the environment is intrinsically incorporate into the early stages of design. This is the core of my passion and fulfillment in what I do. 

Outside of my career I find equal joy in how I spend my free time. I dance salsa, take yoga classes, acting classes, sing in the church choir, and volunteer with Vinnies on a night truck providing food and company to the homeless community. Amidst this I invest time in quality relationships with family and friends. I am not unique in saying that my family is very important to me. However, my upbringing was unique in a way and has given me a worldly experience. My parents are both Irish (hailing from Dublin and Roscrea) and I was born in West Sussex, England. At the age of two I moved to Terrigal NSW Australia, and at the age of seven moved to Maryland USA where I grew up. At the age of 19 I did my study abroad for 6 months in Barcelona, and then lived in Amsterdam for 6 months after this. I then moved to Sydney to finish my degree and have been here for 5 years.

Throughout all of this my family has been my home, returning to Ireland frequently as I grew up. I have continued to feel a very strong pull towards my Irish heritage and feel quite at home with the wonderful people I have met through the IACC and the Rose of Tralee. 

Halaxy (formerly HealthKit) provides a first-class online health platform that allows health practitioners to run more effective practices, and patients to realise improved health outcomes around the world. Immediate benefits include reduced consultation costs, significantly reduced wait times, and patient being provided with the tools they need to take greater ownership over their health.

The past few years have seen Halaxy:
- establish its first overseas office and EMEA headquarters based in Cork, Ireland to facilitate and rapidly expand its global growth.
- grow its practitioner base to thousands of active practitioners located in 131 countries.
- provide customised health practice management services to practitioners in 70 distinct health professions.

Halaxy is now in 'scale-up' mode where it's product is proven and is now rapidly expanding across the world. Our Cork and Melbourne offices play a central role in this continued expansion and success.  Halaxy offers a complete health management platform for practitioners and patients, no other business of its kind exists and is proven on a global scale like Halaxy. 

Halaxy's cloud-based architecture, and its significant customer-led insight and development process rapidly receives and implements practitioner requests, providing first-class software to all practitioners. The product improves with every day for every practitioner across the globe.

In 12 months of operation Halaxy EMEA (Cork, Ireland) has played a significant role in expanding the product and the market reach across Australia, Ireland, and the wider world thanks to the insights and product specifications it has generated.  Halaxy's Cork EMEA Office opening has had a profoundly positive impact on Halaxy's global growth, international market share, and improvement to internal processes. Thanks to our talented staff and Ireland's time-zone, our Cork EMEA Office directly:
-- generates 65% of product improvements, leading to accelerated growth across Ireland, the U.K., South Africa, Europe and East Coast USA.
-- leads the business' internal global scaling projects. These projects have directly resulted in a ten-fold expansion to the business' global yet localised country-specific medical fees data as one example.

Launched in Dublin, Ireland in 2005, Digitary has grown to become the leading online platform for certifying, sharing, and verifying academic credentials.

It all started for Digitary at the University of Limerick (UL), Ireland, in 2005, when we implemented the world’s first learner-centric solution to verify degree certificates, transcripts and European Diploma Supplements. The positive impact of Digitary was immediate - students and graduates could easily access and share their verified achievements online 24/7, without the University having to get involved in the process. University administrators were able to spend their time on more valuable things than issuing paper transcripts, while employers got immediate degree verification with the full consent of the graduate.

The world’s most respected higher education providers use Digitary to eliminate credential fraud, improve service levels, and increase efficiencies.  Learner-centric since the very beginning, Digitary enables millions of learners to access their verified achievements 24/7 and to share them with others, securely, quickly, and easily.

Digitary enables instant verification of records with full Learner consent, maintaining regulatory compliance and eliminating the hassle of manual verification.  With a stellar reputation for successful, scaled programme delivery and consistently excellent service levels, we enjoy exceptional customer relationships and we take pride in the good name we have worked hard to build for more than a decade and a half.

At Digitary, we combine a uniquely knowledgeable and experienced team with the agility and energy of a start-up, and we present in a refreshingly authentic and no-nonsense style.  We could say more, but the fact that our very first customers are still with Digitary more than a decade and a half later speaks volumes. Now, most publicly-funded higher education institutions in Ireland happily use Digitary, as do some of the top UK Universities, including University of Cambridge, University of Manchester, and London School of Economics.

Further afield, Digitary developed Australia’s first digitally signed AHEGS, Testamur (degree certificate), and transcript for the Australian National University (ANU) in 2010.

ANU’s experience with Digitary over the following six years was so positive that it helped cement Digitary’s reputation Down Under.

In 2016, Digitary was chosen over all of its competitors to become the technology platform for My eQuals (https://myequals.edu.au)– a regional platform used by all 47 publicly-funded Universities in Australia and New Zealand.

We are an Irish owned company based in Australia that only started trading in 2016.

We have now built a small team of Irish and Australian experienced and dedicated humans. We have created an infrastructure of business contacts and industry experts together with offices and workshop facilities to support and grow our mission.
 

Irish innovation firmly implanted into the waste and recycling industry.

An award for our company would recognise firstly the efforts and resilience of our team and secondly link our Irish partners to the success mirrored here in Australia for their support and belief in us. It would also mean the world to us and like many companies in our position certainly open doors and connect us to opportunities within and related to the IACC.

What makes us worthy that we have solved problems and achieved great outcomes - community outcomes, financial outcomes. We have done something that everyone said would be “too damn hard”. The team, manufacturing partners, suppliers and clients have all enjoyed the interaction along the way. 

Portwest is a world leader in the design and manufacture of superior quality workwear that meets recognised international standards. Innovation is in our DNA; our team of world class designers specialise in flame-resistant and high-visibility workwear, protective footwear, hand protection, PPE and wearable technology. We are constantly researching the latest trends and innovations which we weave into our cutting edge designs. We pride ourselves on the quality of our range and because we manufacture all products ourselves we are in a position to offer exceptional value to our customers.

With global distribution from bases in Australia, UK, Ireland, Poland, Dubai and the USA, manufacturing facilities in Bangladesh, Myanmar and China, and customer support staff in over 120 countries, Portwest is uniquely placed to deliver the quality improvements and cost reductions at every stage of production and distribution that our customers have come to expect.

Our large team of world-class product designers, specialists in flame-resistant workwear, high-visibility workwear, protective footwear, hand protection and PPE, strive to develop new products to meet the changing needs of workers in all industries.

We are a One Stop Shop, with Three Exceptional Brands.
Portwest is proud to have Huski and Prime Mover as part of our brand family and we are excited to be able to offer our customers an even greater choice of outstanding safety products. Our aim is to be a single source of workwear, safety footwear and PPE, and the Portwest Product Promise guarantees you better quality, service and value. 

Flexirent first came to Ireland in 2007 in support of Harvey Norman’s entry to the Irish market. The need for an alternative finance option in Ireland was evident during the economic downturn and Flexirent provided this much needed solution. It benefitted partners, generated repeat customers and increased customer loyalty.

Flexi-Fi was established in June 2017 and has highlighted immense growth within multiple industries. Flexi-Fi is now available in over 5,000 merchants across Fashion, Beauty, Dental, Garden, Opticians, Jewellers, Home Interior, Cosmetics and many more. 


 

Flexi-Fi is a totally digital payment plan product enabling consumers to gain finance from €80 - €30,000 in minutes. In August 2018, Flexi-Fi released their “No Interest Ever” product which has had a superb uptake from millennials who will continue to use Flexi-Fi throughout their life cycle. Flexi-Fi is the market leader in the Buy Now, Pay Later sector with long standing relationships with Ireland’s most progressive partners including Harvey Norman, Woodies DIY and Therapie Clinic.

The platform can be used in-store across all devices and integrates online with all major website platforms. Setup is a seamless process and the system can be updated instantly to ensure it facilitates changing consumer and partner requirements. Flexi-Fi is an easy alternative to cash or card payments and it’s Ireland’s latest way to pay! 

Flexi-Fi are passionate about innovation and continuously enhance their products to deliver a first-class user experience. Flexi-Fi use Mitek for their state-of-the-art ID verification software to deliver an instant verification assessment. This cutting-edge technology supports Flexi-Fi to lead the Buy Now, Pay Later sector in terms of speed and efficiency.