“The venture capital bias thwarts many female entrepreneurs” Nuala Murphy, Entrepreneur and PhD Candidate, Management at Queen's University Business School, Belfast 

I am naturally entrepreneurial and enjoy building relationships. I grew up in Belfast and, after spending time abroad, I’m now back in Northern Ireland. I studied Applied Language and Linguistics at Manchester University, which took me to both Geneva and Paris. My career began in Paris, where I set up a European sales function for a Northern Irish company.

I enjoyed the early part of my career working for traditional NI companies which were predominantly male led. I always felt empowered and enabled by both the men and women I was working with at that time. However, things changed when I started a family. Perhaps the men around me then weren’t used to women being career-minded and these gender stereotypes framed their assumptions of what I could and couldn’t do. I definitely felt like barriers went up.

A friend gave me a book by Sheryl Sandberg; Lean In, Women Work and the will to Lead, which inspired a global movement encouraging women to ‘lean in’ to their careers. It helped me understand I wasn’t alone in my experiences, so I took the advice in the book and created a Lean In Community in Belfast. We now have several thousand members and recently celebrated 10 years.

I navigated three tough pregnancies in the workplace but was able to access support through private healthcare and early intervention. Not all women are as fortunate which led me to launch my own tech company with a perinatal app to support women during this stage of their lives. Unfortunately, we came up against the venture capital bias which thwarts so many female entrepreneurs and I learned that success in business can be about timing as well as ideas. We were well ahead of our time.

Keen to add purpose to my career, I shifted away from commercial business towards not-for-profits. I worked with the Ladies Who Launch team to help roll out this Californian programme in the UK and Europe, and post pandemic, provided strategic guidance to a number of social enterprises, including the implementation of diversity and inclusion strategies, policies, social value and governance.

Last year I took some time out to consider my next steps and after a meeting of minds with a Professor at the Business School at Queen’s University Belfast, embarked on a PhD in Management exploring gender equity and the policy implementation gap.

I joined the IoD because if you want to influence the direction of UK business you need to be part of it, to network, influence and develop. My specialism is allyship – especially male allyship which is so critical for gender equality – and the IoD is where I have found both male and female business directors most open to becoming the change we need to see. I am now on the NI Committee and am very proud that we have parity in our male and female membership, testament to the leadership and team.

It feels good to be in a space where I can contribute towards change, especially as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion are coming under fire. To achieve gender equality, especially intersectionality, it will take a long time. There is increasing evidence that coalitions of men and women will be the solution moving forward. With that in mind I think it’s the perfect time to ramp up on the good stuff and call on our colleagues both men and women to celebrate our success so far.