EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.
Insights
Asking the better questions that unlock new answers to the working world's most complex issues.
Services
EY helps clients create long-term value for all stakeholders. Enabled by data and technology, our services and solutions provide trust through assurance and help clients transform, grow and operate.
Industries
Discover how EY insights and services are helping to reframe the future of your industry.
About us
At EY, our purpose is building a better working world. The insights and services we provide help to create long-term value for clients, people and society, and to build trust in the capital markets.
Recent Searches
Trending
-
EY.ai
Artificial Intelligence - The Future Won't Wait
16 Nov 2023 AI -
How can retailers best serve Irish consumers this festive season
Discover how retailers can effectively serve Irish consumers this festive season by understanding their shopping preferences, from free shipping strategies to sustainability trends.
12 Dec 2024 Consumer Products -
CEOs in Ireland leveraging disruption for strategic gain
Our report reveals that CEOs in Ireland are particularly optimistic about managing business costs, revenue growth, and profitability.
14 Nov 2024 CEO agenda
EY CEO Outlook: Rethinking Ireland’s approach to philanthropy, with Deirdre Mortell, Rethink Ireland
In this episode of The EY Podcast: CEO Outlook Series, Deirdre Mortell, CEO of Rethink Ireland, joins host Richard Curran to talk about her passion for social change, the power of people to make a positive impact, her vision for a better Ireland, and how this role is helping her to achieve it.
Related topics
From an early age, Deirdre Mortell wanted to ‘change the world’. A very active participant in student politics, Mortell left UCC with a Masters in Women’s Studies but with no clear sense of what came next and “sort of fell into the non-profit sector and particularly into fundraising”. Today, she leads one of Ireland’s largest social innovation funds, with almost €100m raised and 400 innovations backed.
Rethink Ireland was created by the Irish government following the last economic crash with the aim of restimulating philanthropy during the recession. Having built high-performance teams for non-profits such as Oxfam, Barnardos, and Headstrong, and co-founding The One Foundation with Declan Ryan, Mortell was appointed CEO of Rethink in 2014. Her mission is not just to fund the organisations tackling Ireland's critical social issues, it’s also to transform the entire culture of fundraising and philanthropy in Ireland.
They also discuss:
- The most common “demoralising” myths about the non-profit sector
- The culture of philanthropy in Ireland (‘D’ grade, must try harder) and how Rethink Ireland is helping to improve it
- Mortell’s experience in student politics and setting up the political party, The Women’s Alliance
- Creating The One Foundation with Declan Ryan and what they managed to achieve in 10 years.
- Rethink Ireland’s manifesto 2030 – a vision for the Ireland we want to live in
For your convenience, a full text transcript of this podcast is also available.
Graham Reid: Welcome to the CEO Outlook Podcast series, where our host Richard Curran talks to some of Ireland's leading CEOs about leadership, lessons learned, and their future business plans. Hi, I'm Graham Reid, Partner and Head of Client and Markets at EY in Ireland. In this episode, we welcome Deirdre Mortell, CEO of Rethink Ireland. The social innovation fund focused on building a more equal sustainable Ireland, providing cash grants and support to social enterprises and communities around the country. Rethink helps to grow big ideas and drive real impact on a national scale. Over to you, Richard.
Richard Curran: Thanks, Graham. And we hope you're enjoying this podcast series of interviews with CEOs. And thanks for listening to the EY podcast CEO Outlook Series. If you like what you've heard, hit follow or subscribe and leave a review. And do subscribe because we have lots more big interviews with industry leaders in the weeks ahead. Well, my next guest on this episode is Deirdre Mortell, CEO of Rethink Ireland. The organisation partners with individuals, families and businesses to identify and support charities and social enterprises working with communities. Deirdre, you're very welcome. I've just given a bit of a description there of Rethink. What would your description be of what Rethink Ireland does?Deirdre Mortell: Well, we would say that we bring together philanthropy and sometimes government funds to solve the most critical, social, and environmental issues facing Ireland today. And we think about those as issues like equality, scaling, social enterprise, the green transition and mental health and of course, educational disadvantage.
Richard Curran: So would you tend to match that public sector state money with private philanthropic money? How does that work?
Deirdre Mortell: It depends on the situation and the issue. There have been cases where we've matched and cases where there's no matched funding provided. And really it just depends on the issue and the timing.
Richard Curran: And of course, you're looking at new ideas that are coming forward in a lot of these projects and you're also looking at different ways of funding them. Instead of just saying, "here you are, this will help with the next step of what it is that you're doing, or here is a grant or here is some assistance". You're more thinking about investing socially for the long term in these projects.
Deirdre Mortell: So we're kind of like the Enterprise Ireland for non-profits. And so what we do is we seek out what are the innovative solutions that have been developed by non-profits that can tackle those issues, but really, really importantly that are scalable or replicable. So we're coming from the place where we're actually really good at developing solutions here in Ireland at community level, but we're not so good at spreading them around. So I like to think about it like if we can find the solution to hospital waiting lists in Kilkenny Hospital, I'd lay you €100 we're never going to see that in Letterkenny Hospital. So how can we solve that problem? That's the way I like to think about it.
Richard Curran: Now, I want to get into, a little bit later on, some of the projects that you support and the kinds of things. But just to start off with yourself and to go back to the beginning, you've worked for the not-for-profit sector for some time, but at the very start, you're originally from Cork. Grew up in Cork, but you had this interesting American family connection, too.
Deirdre Mortell: Yeah, So my dad's from Cork and my mom is from Boston, but both of them had, you know, I'll call it emigrated to California. So my dad had done a degree in UCC and he went to California to do a PhD, and my mum had done a degree in Boston and had also, from her point of view, emigrated because it was a really long way in the 1960s to California and she was working in the university. So they met and fell in love.
Richard Curran: And did you move to Cork? Were you born in the US and was America sort of a big part going back and forward?
Deirdre Mortell: So I was born in the US and lived there till I was five and then we moved back to Cork and I started primary school.
Richard Curran: Was that a culture shock going to cork? You don't remember?
Deirdre Mortell: I don't really remember it. Yeah. So you'd have to ask my parents.
Richard Curran: And you studied in UCC. What did you study in UCC?
Deirdre Mortell: I studied Commerce. What it was called commerce in those days. BComm now, I guess business, which was a four year degree. And one of the things I found was that within about three months of getting in the door, I thought, Oh my God, I hate this. It's so boring, what have I done? But I decided I couldn't bear to do first year again. So I was going to put the head down and just stick my way through it. So I had to find other ways to keep myself occupied. And I, along the way, kind of fell into student politics and got involved there.
Richard Curran: And then choosing commerce, you know, it's like something, did that imply you had some idea that you wanted to go into the world of business in some way? Or was it just I can't think of what else to put down and apply to do.
Deirdre Mortell: Yeah. I just didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was only 16 going to university and I really didn't know. I was kind of a bit of an all-rounder, so it wasn't like, Oh, I'm obviously good at this or that. And so I thought it was a good general degree that would give me exposure to lots of subjects, and that was true. But I guess I discovered pretty quickly that I was the last person in the world that could like make a balance sheet balance, for example.
Richard Curran: So student politics beckoned and UCC. Were you a radical? Did you chain yourself to any railings or anything like that?
Deirdre Mortell: No, I don't think we had that in the 1980s. So what I did was I was actually very interested in women's issues, being a young woman myself. And, you know, I went to university in 1984. So, you know, the 1980s was a pretty hard decade for women. We'd had an abortion referendum. We'd had a divorce referendum where Alice Glenn said that women voting for divorce was like turkeys voting for Christmas. And I just thought, I don't really like the way this country treats people of my gender and I feel I need to do something about it. So I started local in UCC and got involved with something called the Women's Rights Action Committee, and we decided to just set a goal that was there's no female doctor, there's only a male doctor here and he appears to be 3000 years old. He was probably about 60, but certainly none of the girls I knew were prepared to go to him and that meant they weren't getting contraception, they weren't getting smear tests, all those things that are really, really important. And girls were getting pregnant, dropping out of college. So we just ran a campaign over a year to get the college to provide a female doctor. And, you know, between September and June, they had agreed to appoint one the following September. So I just discovered, you know, it's possible to change the world one step at a time if you get focused.
Richard Curran: And it's interesting point and that insight by saying going after something that was specific, but that in getting a win in relation to that and getting a female doctor that opened up a whole load of things for women students at that time. But it was a very achievable small thing. Do you think that's the way you like to operate? And I'm thinking about what you do now in Rethink Ireland. Does some of that sort of still apply?
Deirdre Mortell: Definitely so. I mean, you know, just like then at Rethink Ireland, I mean, we have a very broad sweep of vision for the Ireland that we want to live in. We've published that in our manifesto 2030 that's on our website. It says everything from, you know, by 2030 we'd like Ireland to have fallen out of love with GDP as a measure of success for our country and fallen in love with other measures like the National Happiness Index or whether our environment is healthy. So those are big, broad sweeps of goals. But of course, and you need those visionary goals to motivate people to join you. But of course you also have to break them down into bite sized chunks. But there's no harm in setting a goal that's bigger than maybe you can see the steps too, because things become possible as you start biting off those steps. And sometimes you can get much further than you think you can.
Richard Curran: And going back to that time in the 80s and student politics in UCC and women's rights, looking back at it, that was a tough fight. And, you know, people like yourself got involved in it and it took a long time because there were abortion and divorce referenda at that time. It was a sort of a long, hard road, wasn't it?
Deirdre Mortell: It was. I mean, I went back to college to do a master's in 91, in Trinity, in women's studies. And I thought long and hard, I wanted to look at whether women and men had different leadership styles or the same styles. And I thought long and hard about whether I should do that in a Women's Studies department or a business department. And I decided to do it in a Women's Studies department so I could just look at the issue and not have to argue with my supervisor every day about whether it was a valid issue to look at. But that year in 91/92, the X case happened and there we were out marching again because a 14 year old girl who had been raped was not allowed to go abroad to get an abortion. And so it just seemed for a while like things were getting worse, not better.
Richard Curran: That study you mentioned about leadership and men and women, what did you conclude? Do men lead differently to women?
Deirdre Mortell: Well, it was a really fascinating one because I was replicating a study that had been done in the US, and the methodology was that you found a bunch of senior women managers and they nominated an equivalent male peer. And in the US, the findings were that men and women led very differently. And in Ireland the findings were that they were largely the same. So I had to go in and think about why that could be so different. And the conclusion that I reached was that the cultural environment in Ireland was so different in relation to women in business. There were very few senior women in business at that time. It was hard to find women, to do my questionnaire. And so my conclusion was that in order to even reach those levels, they really needed to lead in the same way as men, in order so they could be successful.
Richard Curran: Almost to conform. And that's how in an Irish context, there wasn't this great difference in leadership styles.
Deirdre Mortell: That was my conclusion.
Richard Curran: What about now, do you think men now think very differently in Ireland?
Deirdre Mortell: I think there is much more space for women and men to lead in a variety of different ways. So now we actually have the concept of management styles and there's a range of management styles that are acceptable. And some of those management styles were what would have been called feminine leadership in the 1980s and 90s and now are just called leadership. So I think we've arrived in a very different place after college.
Richard Curran: Were you tempted to go into politics having done that student politics? Did that sort of give you an appetite for that?
Deirdre Mortell: Well, I got involved with starting a women's political party the year the X case there in 1992. We launched it. It was called the Women's Alliance. Myself and about 30 other women. And that was a really exciting time for only about six months. And then there was a snap general election, the government fell, there was a snap general election. So we weren't ready to run. But what did happen was what was called the spring tide. So all the other parties reacted to our launch by running way more women than they normally did. And we actually significantly increased the number of women in the Dail and Seanad, which we like to think was because of us.
Richard Curran: Very good. The Women's Alliance. I'm thinking about the Women's Coalition in the north at the time of the peace process, so it might have been something similar to that or could have, any regrets about that? No?
Deirdre Mortell: I think we did what we could do at the time. Yeah. So no, no regrets.
Richard Curran: Career wise after college, did you know what you wanted to do at that point?
Deirdre Mortell: Not really. I was still very interested in changing the world. I came out in 92 with a women's studies degree, which wasn't really going to get me a job, and so I sort of fell into the non-profit sector and particularly into fundraising. So I had a good marketing degree from UCC and really fell in there and ended up working in a series of organisations, Oxfam, Barnardos, leading the fundraising and marketing functions and learning how to build high performance teams in order to change the world.
Richard Curran: And it's interesting when you say high performance teams, people who don't work in that sector often don't associate that sector with things like high performance. But the reality is you've got to raise money, you've got to have the people to help you to raise the money, and then you've got to do the best things possible with that money. And it is about performance, isn't it?
Deirdre Mortell: Absolutely. Running a charity or a non-profit is running a business, but without the resources that you might have in business. And I think there are a lot of myths around the effectiveness of charities and the performance of teams and charities that I think are quite demoralising, actually, for people who choose to take that approach. And so I would say they are myths.
Richard Curran: And one of the things you did was the One Foundation, that involved Declan Ryan.
Deirdre Mortell: That's right. So I was working in Barnardo's. Declan Ryan was the Chair of the board and after six years there, he asked me to come and work with him. He had decided, as a wealthy man who had turned 40, he had decided he wanted to give away a significant portion of his wealth philanthropically, and he wanted to set up a foundation. So he said, ‘I'm not really sure how to do this, but I feel like you have a few ideas’. And I said, do you know wha? I actually do. So I went and worked with Declan for ten years, setting up his foundation and opening it and closing it over ten years, which was our plan.
Richard Curran: And I would imagine a lot of money went through that foundation for causes. How much are you talking about?
Deirdre Mortell: Yeah. So we spent about €85 million over ten years. Over 90% of that was here in Ireland. And we set out eight big goals to achieve over ten years. And they were things like make children's rights real and transform the youth mental health system so it works. Get social entrepreneurship going in Ireland. And we said, well, we made a secret deal that said, well, if we could get four out of the eight, that would be success. And in the end we got six out of the eight. So we were very proud of that.
Richard Curran: Was it very unusual to be involved in a foundation like that? Did you know at the start that there was going to be a time limit on it? Was the idea that we're going to do ten years or I'm going to do this, you know, did that affect the job and how you thought about the job?
Deirdre Mortell: Well, absolutely it did. But I guess if you're a philanthropist, one of the first things you have to think about is obviously, how much money do I want to allocate to this, out of out of my income or my wealth? But also in what way do I want to work? And one of the first questions is, do I want to set up a fund and spend the interest, or do I actually want to spend down the capital as well? And that's an early decision you have to make. And so we sat down together, and Declan decided, you know, I actually want to spend down the capital. And I think that was an absolutely brilliant decision because, you know, the issues that you face in that moment, in your life, in your country, among the people you love and the causes you care about are urgent and important. And so why would you save some money for later? Arguably, you're just betting on failure. Why don't you do your absolute best? Throw all your capital, but also all the other tools you have at your disposal, your networks, your reputation, your skills. Why don't you throw all of those at trying to really solve those problems while you can and let the next generation of philanthropists pick up in the relay race if that's necessary.
Richard Curran: And it's interesting because Ireland's wealth or wealth within Ireland has been growing and has grown very substantially since the financial crash, you know, over the last seven, eight years in particular. Are there more people, do you think, who are thinking, as Declan Ryan did, who have access to a lot of money, who could make a very big difference in people's lives?
Deirdre Mortell: Well, I wish that I could answer that by giving you data. And unfortunately, there's very little data on philanthropy in Ireland, and it's one of the great challenges we have. However, the governments in the middle of drafting it's new philanthropy policy, which is actually out for consultation at the moment, and anybody can write in and make a submission. And I would argue strongly that one of the key elements of that needs to be that we actually develop some baseline data so we can track it. On the other hand, I deal with philanthropists, both companies and individuals and families, every day of the week. And what I would say is I definitely think there's an increasing appetite to have that conversation and not just to have the conversation, but to be really thoughtful about what might I want to achieve with my wealth and how might I want to go about that and over what time frame. But those are incredibly important questions.
Richard Curran: If you were to look at the culture of philanthropy in Ireland. How would you score it without the data based on your experience and your assessment compared to other countries such as the United States, for example?
Deirdre Mortell: Well, I think even if we leave out the United States because they're like, you know, the be all and end all of philanthropy, but they do have an entirely different economic and political system. Even within Europe, I think we would score, as you know, D; Could do better, could try harder. And I think one of the things I think I would come back to is it is about culture. If I think about, you know, if I'm going to have dinner with friends, what do we talk about over dinner? Does anybody ever talk about, you know, I made a charitable donation or a philanthropic gift last week, and I was just thinking how proud I am of that. And I want to tell you a bit about why I did that and what moved me to do it. Those are not dinner table conversations in Ireland, either among wealthy people with substantial wealth to give, but even among ordinary people, are we talking to our children saying, do you know I made a donation to the Irish Cancer Society because your grandfather died of cancer a year ago today. And I was just thinking about him and I said, you know, I'm going to make a gift to reflect that. That's not a part of our culture. And I would love to think that that was possible.
Richard Curran: But is there a bit of a contradiction there that I would have had the impression and maybe it's backed up by data that Irish people are good givers to charity. Irish people in general. And your experience would be that among the wealthy it's probably only a D. Is there a big dichotomy there between the haves and have nots and how generous they are?
Deirdre Mortell: Well, I think what we know from the data is that charitable giving, which tends to be maybe impulsive giving or once off giving, we're actually very good at that. And I think we pride ourselves on the Band Aids and Live Aids, which are great examples of that. But I think when it comes to actually planning our gifts and thinking about, well, what would I like to do over the next five years and how do I want to do it by myself, or do I want to involve my family? And how might I approach that? I think we really are not great at that at the moment. And I think there's a real need to develop peer networks and peer supports. And that's part of what Rethink Ireland is able to offer.
Richard Curran: Is there a bit of a cultural thing as well that if I'm a very wealthy person and I do actually give a reasonable amount of money or a generous amount of money to charity, that I shouldn't be talking about it at the dinner table. You know, is this kind of thing that you're supposed to be modest and not talk about it. Whereas I would imagine culturally in the United States, among people, they're very open about, “Oh, yeah, we made our foundation, made such and such a donation to whatever it is”.
Deirdre Mortell: Yeah. So I think in Ireland we just don't like talking about money, full stop. It's not just about philanthropy. We just don't like talking about money. It's a little bit taboo, and I think we need to try and break through that in order to actually be proud of what we do, but also to challenge each other. “So I love what you've done about that. Tell me more about that. I've never thought about it that way. But you know what? Here's what I did. What do you think about that?” And to have that really powerful, strong but really supportive conversation, there's so much we can do there.
Richard Curran: What about corporates and ESG? I again would have imagined that in recent years, bigger corporations are getting better at structuring what they're doing and putting money into foundations and targeting this kind of charities and causes that they want to support. Are they?
Deirdre Mortell: Well, we're definitely seeing much more of that as we kind of rebuild from the financial crisis. There's no doubt about that. But I think the multinational corporations are really leading the way in terms of being thoughtful about what they're trying and planning what they're trying to achieve. So whether it's the tech companies, the international banks or whatever it is. Now, you know, they have an advantage because they often have philanthropy teams back home in their home countries who are experts and who are who are thinking about what markets are we in, what do we want to do in each market? Do we have a strategic objective? But what I would really love to see is Irish companies getting involved and following their lead. And we do have some great examples. IPB Insurance, the last mutual insurance company in Ireland who most people have never even heard of. They actually insure the local authorities and ETBs in this country. Big company. I mean, they have supported social enterprise in Ireland over the last five years to the tune of over €4 million. And they've built a strategy and they have sustained it. And I would love to see more of that from other Irish companies.
Richard Curran: Rethink Ireland can trace its origins to what was actually a task force, an idea think tank task force.
Deirdre Mortell: That's right. Rethink Ireland was actually created by government and in the last financial crash. I think we all know that social sector spending crashed and burned and the IMF took over. So obviously, the government cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. We know that. But philanthropy also really fell very dramatically. And that was the time when one foundation was closing. We didn't plan to close in a crash. We planned it ten years in advance. But that's what happened. We closed in 2013. And so the government set up a task force to say, how can we stimulate philanthropy in a recession? And I was able to be part of that task force. So it met over about a few years. And in 2012, a strategy went to cabinet for sign off. And that included four key ideas, one of which was create a national social innovation fund, and that became Rethink Ireland.
Richard Curran: And then it's one thing to have the idea and even the Cabinet approval, it's another thing to make it happen to get going. Was it difficult at the start? Nobody's heard of you, you know, that sort of thing when you start off day one?
Deirdre Mortell: So it's fantastic as a startup to have the government approval behind you. But, you know, there's many a slip between the cup and the lip. And so it took about two years to actually get the government department assigned to support us, to set us up with the contract for matched funding in order to stimulate philanthropy and to just get things going. So yes, that was quite a challenging time. But we had a fantastic board who was very passionate and drove very hard. And so we did launch in 2016, January 26th, actually Taoiseach Enda Kenny launched us in 2016, and then we went on that year to do think tank with a donation of half a million from Google. So from there we got more on a roll.
Richard Curran: And you have built it and built it. How big is the fund now?
Deirdre Mortell: So we've now raised €95 million in the last seven, eight years. We should be 100 million, I hope, by the end of this year. And we have backed just about 400 innovations at this stage.
Richard Curran: Very hard to ask you to single out any one or 2 or 3 from 400, but I'm sure there's a huge variety of projects in there. Are there any in particular that you think warrant a specific mention or are unusual or are different?
Deirdre Mortell: Well, I'm not allowed to have favourites, so I'll just tell you one of my favourites, but I'd like to give a special mention to Bounceback recycling. Maybe your listeners can guess from Bounceback what it does. I'm not sure, but it's a mattress recycling company and it's a social enterprise. So it was actually started by Galway Traveller Movement. It's based in Galway, led by a fantastic CEO called Martin Ward, who is a traveller, and it was created by them, with the goal of employing traveller men. Traveller men have unemployment rates higher than 80%, not because they don't want to work, but because of the racism and discrimination they face in the workplace. And so Galway Traveller Movement said, look, we're just going to have to do it ourselves. So they set up this as a social enterprise. In the first year or so, they recycled about 5000 mattresses by about eight traveller men taking every mattress apart by hand. You can just imagine how much work that was and how it works is that the component parts are then recycled. So, you know, if there's copper coils, they go to copper recycling people, the foam goes to foam recycling people and so on. And so they came on board with our social enterprise fund to really help them figure out what's our strategic plan, what's our business model, how have we got the right brand, all those basic things and we supported them with a small grant over about six months and an accelerator program, and from there they just ran with it. So they came back to us for growth funding. So now we've put in over half €1 million over three years to help them grow. And by the end of that three year period, they will have recycled enough mattresses to fill Croke Park from the top to the bottom. So what I love about that is they're diverting mattresses from landfill. They are employing traveller men and giving them skills where they can stay on or move on into another workplace. And thirdly, where do the profits go? Well, of course, they don't go to anybody in particular because it's a social enterprise, so they use the profits to educate travellers through adult education programs, in higher education in NUIG and other places. So I just love the fact that the environmental and social impact is in lock step.
Richard Curran: What about the challenges that you face? I'm thinking about a lot of organisations. No matter what they do, hiring people is a challenge at the moment. Going into the not for profit sector, is that an attractive proposition for people? Is it something that people are interested in doing? And they think I'll do it for a couple of years, but I might not stay there? Is that a challenge?
Deirdre Mortell: So it depends on the person, but it also massively depends on where we are in the economic cycle. And I think, you know, very often the non-profit sector doesn't pay the same as other sectors and or may not provide the same level of security or stability, things like pensions and permanent contracts. So I think at the moment it's quite a tough choice for young people to make because of the cost of living. So I think it's definitely much harder to hire young people into the non-profit sector than it would have been five years ago. And it really requires non-profits to really go out there and position what they are offering. But what I would say is we know that this generation is highly motivated by a sense of purpose, and that's what the non-profit sector uniquely offers, is a very strong sense of purpose.
Richard Curran: What about the goals that you have for the organisation for Rethink? Where would you like to take it? Get the crystal ball out five years from now? Seven years from now?
Deirdre Mortell: Well, I'd like us to have made a huge dent in our manifesto goals for 2030. So we talk about a bold generation taking charge and making bold decisions about where Ireland is going. So I would really like a cohort of young leaders to have really grabbed Ireland by the reins, leading non-profits, leading for profits, starting impact businesses, and running for politics. But I also really I'd love to see Ireland leading the green transition in Europe. We're very far from that right now. But we know as a country that when we put our minds to something, we are well able to accelerate and we really need to step on the accelerator to do that. But it's very possible if we put our minds to it.
Richard Curran: Well, you have some really ambitious plans there for the future, Deirdre. The sky's the limit in terms of what you want to do. One of the things I ask all of our guests on this podcast is we have a little quickfire round of questions and they're a bit of fun. They're fairly light and I'll fire ahead and ask you them. Now, the first one is what CEO or entrepreneur do you most admire and why?
Deirdre Mortell: Um, so I have huge admiration for a woman called Rosaleen Blair. She's a Cork woman, like myself. She emigrated to London and started a business called AMS and she sold it for £819 million sterling in 2019. This is a woman who grew and built her own company. She's similar age to me, so she managed to buck all those challenges that women face by starting her own business instead of trying to get a job with someone else. That's pretty impressive.
Richard Curran: That is very impressive.
Deirdre Mortell: I would also like to add we have a new chair of our board at Rethink Ireland. Just in the last three months Aine Kerr. Many people will know Aine Kerr from Kinzen and Storyful. She also sold, along with Mark Little, sold Kinzen to Spotify, and she's now head of Trust and Safety at Spotify, but has joined us as Chair of our board and really looking forward to seeing where she helps us lead the organisation.
Richard Curran: Okay. Well, I know Aine Kerr very well. Your favourite book or film?
Deirdre Mortell: Yes I'd like to talk about a film that's just actually just about to come out and I'm dying to see it. It's called Uncharitable, put together by an American called Dan Pallotta. And Dan's mission in life over the last 30 years is to challenge those myths about charities and non-profits that you talked about earlier. And he is really setting out in the film. And Edward Norton, the film star, is the star of the film. He's really setting out to say, what's the definition of success for a charity or a non-profit? Is it about getting our administration below 10% or 5%? No, that's got nothing to do with what we achieve. It's about achieving the most impact, not achieving the least expenditure. And how can we turn that whole idea on its head so that our boards and our donors and the public are thinking about charities and non-profits around impact and impact, thinking I can't wait to see it.
Richard Curran: Yeah, it's called Uncharitable.
Deirdre Mortell: Uncharitable.
Richard Curran: When is it out?
Deirdre Mortell: It's out on September 28th. If you're in Dublin, it's in the Irish Film Centre at 10:00 in the morning, and then I think it's on release after that.
Richard Curran: Okay, great. Sounds fascinating. Do you have a mantra in business or in work something that guides you?
Deirdre Mortell: Well, I'm actually going to steal a mantra that I heard this week that I thought, why didn't I have this for the last 20 years, which is, what would you do if you weren't afraid?
Richard Curran: Interesting. I'm only thinking about that now, as you say it. And when finished this job, what would you like people to say about what you achieved and how you did it?
Deirdre Mortell: What do I want on my gravestone? Uh. She changed Ireland. It's as simple as that.
Richard Curran: Great. Your biggest mistake or regret?
Deirdre Mortell: Pass. I can't think of one right now.
Richard Curran: I was going to say, is that because you can't think of one or you don't do regrets? You just sort of say, I never look back in a negative light.
Deirdre Mortell: Well, it could be. I don't do regrets. I don't have one that leaps to mind.
Richard Curran: Okay. Any advice you'd have for other CEOs, entrepreneurs or leaders of organizations? Someone starting out. What advice would you give them?
Deirdre Mortell: Listen, but listen in a balanced way. Listening is about taking in the advice or information that you're hearing from others and then using your own brain and sense of self to evaluate that and decide what you think about it. So listening is about taking it in, but you have to back yourself around what you think about that and whether that's good advice or information for you to use. So always keep your brain switched on and back yourself.
Richard Curran: So listening is the key, but it's only the first half of it. You've got to make up your own mind after that?
Deirdre Mortell: You do. And I would also say almost every leader I've ever met, but especially women leaders, have imposter syndrome. They and we often feel like I'm only here till I'm found out. And I what I have learned is, do you know what? Everybody feels like that. So if you're going to have those feelings, don't let them be critical feelings. Let them be feelings that let you challenge yourself, but don't let them hold you back. It's okay to feel like I don't know. I'm not sure. But, you know, be self-deprecating, but don't let it hold you back because you can do it.
Richard Curran: Okay. Deirdre, it's been a pleasure talking to you. And thank you very much for sharing those insights. Congratulations on all you're doing in community building around the country and long may it continue. Deirdre Mortell, thank you very much for joining us today.
Deirdre Mortell: Thank you, Richard.
Richard Curran: We hope you're enjoying this EY podcast CEO Outlook series. Remember, you can catch previous interviews we've done with CEOs like David McRedmond of An Post, Tony Smurfit of Smurfit Kappa Group, Imelda Hurley of Coillte, Steve Cutler of Icon and many others until the next time, thanks for listening. Bye bye.
C-suite podcast series
View the full list of EY CEO and CFO podcasts where our featured experts from the world of business discuss their path to success, and offer insights and analysis on the big issues facing organisations today.