This conversation with guest Jean Callanan takes a winding and fascinating route around her amazing career.
It is about a career in which she spent over 11 years with Unilever the global leader in consumer goods working in various marketing and leadership roles including marketing Magnum ice cream in Germany and Italy and as part of a team who set up an ice cream business in Argentina and Uruguay. She also worked in Waterford Crystal at a time when it was one of the iconic international Irish brands.
She is now a non-executive director of Bord Iascaigh Mhara-Ireland’s Seafood Development Agency, a founder of the Momenta Hub, a strategic consultant, chair of the Irish Hospice Foundation and an international advocate for dying well.
Along the way during this podcast lessons from her life and work flow, how she came to rub shoulders with future EU leaders while in a college in Bruges in Belgium and her experience on The Forum on Broadcasting established by the Irish Government.
Her lifetime experience also brings learnings. Your career is important she says so avoid jumping into the first shining opportunity that comes along, take time to reimagine your future. She also voices strong views on recruiters providing greater marks to higher education achievements than work experience or overcoming social inequality.
Throughout this conversation surprises keep coming. When Jean was head-hunted for a well-known Irish company with an international reputation she went to meet a psychologist who was one of the team advising the company on the candidates. His view of Jean was that she could do the job blindfolded but that it was clear that she wasn’t hugely enthusiastic about the job because in his words ‘she didn’t lie enough’. She got the job but left just after a year.
The life of her grandmother, who when she became a widow went on to join a congregation of nuns in Africa led Jean to understand the lack of palliative care in African countries and why many of the elderly nuns came back to Ireland to die. This prompted her to become involved in the Irish Hospice Foundation, where she is currently chair of the board and she speaks to Jim and Ellen about its work to ensure the best end-of-life and bereavement care, for all.
These are just some of the reasons that this episode of Off the Fence with Purpose will keep you totally engrossed.
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