AN ENTERPRISING MIND

– Julie Sinnamon, Executive Director – Global Business Development, Enterprise Ireland

WORDS: Liv Morgan

Julie Sinnamon is straight down to business when we meet in Enterprise Ireland’s
Head Office in East Point Business Park, Dublin. The County Down native tells WMB
that her current focus and priority is jobs: a priority stronger than it has been in the last ten or 15 years. “We’re working with all existing companies, not just with big expansions but encouraging every small company in the country to see if they can actually add one, two or three (employees). These are numbers which, if all of the companies do, can add up.

"Also we have a big focus on sustaining existing employment because one of the constant
themes we’re seeing is jobs being lost and jobs being gained. What we need to do is make
sure that there’s a net increase.”

Enterprise Ireland is the state organisation responsible for the development and growth of Irish enterprises in world markets; working in partnership with Irish enterprises to help them start, grow, innovate and win export sales on global markets. “We have increased targets as an organisation to develop a higher number of new start-ups every year and specifically one of the target areas is that of female entrepreneurship; if we look at the number of start-ups that Enterprise Ireland supports every year I would say we are underrepresented in terms of the number of female entrepreneurs we’re engaged with.”

Apart from being risk averse, Julie says the lack of female entrepreneurs coming forward to
Enterprise Ireland is because “a lot of the sectors that Enterprise Ireland are engaging with have a higher number of males in senior positions in those companies and out of that will typically come the pool of people to start up new companies.”

The Going For Growth programme is currently the only specific programme that Enterprise Ireland works with to grow existing female talent: “Hence our interest in working with the programme to ensure that the female entrepreneurs we do have are maximising their growth potential. It’s about finding new female entrepreneurs and also working with the existing pool to be able to support their growth.”

Read more about Julie Sinnamon in the Spring 2012 issue of WMB, on newsstands March 1st!