At 105 centimetres or 3' 5" tall, Sinéad Burke has become a booming voice in the global fashion world. Talking equality with US Vice Presidents and people such as Oprah, speaking not once, but twice, at Davos and being a contributing editor to British Vogue, Sinéad has the goal of designing a world that works for everyone. However, she wasn't always so clear about her purpose nor was she always so accepting of herself.

She tells Margaret E Ward about the major turning point that led her to radical self acceptance and to her guiding mantra: "I'm not changing for anybody." As an activist and academic who found her voice online, Sinéad also discusses the struggle to "define" your elevator pitch when you wear many hats. And despite all of this remarkable success, at just 28, she still loses her nerve. She also reveals her personal pep talk process to us.

Ruth Curran knows the answer to both of those questions.

Ruth travels the world to find the best CEOs, CFOs and CIOs for a whole range of high-level organisations. She’s managing partner at MERC, Ireland’s leading executive search firm – a role she balances with being a mother to four children all under the age of 12.

In the latest Broadly Speaking podcast, Ruth talks us through the key attributes needed for leaders in today’s world, what organisations are looking for before they hire and the trends that she sees emerging.

Managing a team of 2,000 employees is a huge responsibility, but Anne O’Leary takes it all in her stride. As chief executive of Vodafone Ireland, she has worked hard to build an inclusive, flexible and empathetic culture.

Anne does not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to people management. Instead she is focused on understanding what works for individual employees and their lives outside the office. She not only talks the talk on work-life balance but this former triathlete, who still has a passion for exercise, lives it too.

When entrepreneur Nikki Evans quit her well-paid management consulting job in London to move home to Ireland during the recession and start a pre-paid gift card business, people thought she was bonkers. But last year, over a decade after launching her business and a few pivots later, she sold her company for €6 million.

Now Nikki is chief executive of the fintech business she founded, Perfect Card, and is keen to keep growing it. She has built an “output-focused” work culture and considers her ability to make decisions to be one of her biggest strengths as an entrepreneur.

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Broadly Speaking, hosted by Margaret E. Ward, goes behind the scenes to find out what motivates, frustrates and intrigues the people who lead. Featuring in-depth interviews with founders, innovators and senior executives, this leadership and management podcast is for people who want to lead or are fascinated by those who do.

It was an awkward dinner and a "make or break" moment. Louise Grubb, co-founder and CEO of TriviumVet was going to have to explain how her wonderful pharmaceutical business couldn't pay the dinner bill. She was in Copenhagen wining and dining a man who would become a major and game-changing distributor for her nutraceutical product. Thankfully he paid the bill and Louise lived to tell the glorious tale, which she does so here to Margaret E Ward. From the daughter of a shopkeeper to being a "lost" dietician, Louise recounts her story of entrepreneurial success where she started not one but three businesses and now lives in the home of her dreams overlooking the sea. If you need a pep talk in tenacity and a serving of doggedness, Louise's story will solve both of those needs.

Podcast Length: 32:24

Broadly Speaking, hosted by Margaret E. Ward, goes behind the scenes to find out what motivates, frustrates and intrigues the people who lead. Featuring in-depth interviews with founders, innovators and senior executives, this leadership and management podcast is for people who want to lead or are fascinated by those who do.

Andreea Wade is famous on the start-up scene and she is also intimately acquainted with the boardroom tables of venture capital firms. That's because she's CEO of Opening, a fast-growing start-up that's using artificial intelligence in the recruitment industry. The serial entrepreneur tells Margaret E Ward about what it's like to get funding as a female founder, from being ignored in meetings as a CEO to proving she has a right to "knock on the door" in the first place. This tenacious entrepreneur from Transylvania gives a no-holds-barred insight into the start-up/fundraising world where gender so often gets in the way, and reveals the ways she has overcome the biases and barriers that stand in the way of success. A must-listen for any entrepreneur.

Podcast Length: 28:14

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She'd just become partner at Accenture, and Vivienne Jupp assumed she'd be joined by lots more women in the partnership ranks. She wasn't. The veteran board member and businesswoman began to notice two things: people talked differently about women than they did about men and men talked about going home to "babysit" their children. Vivienne decided to look under the hood and change things, practically, from the inside out. After all, this is a woman who travelled to Mexico City at the age of 15, to swim for Ireland in the Olympics. She's just stepped down as chair of the board of CIE, but she remains on as chair of CIE Tours. With decades of high-level business experience she shares the secrets to her success with Margaret E Ward, which include getting the blood circulating in the body and working out your own definition of work-life balance.

Podcast Length: 25:41

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Trish Long is the General Manager and Vice President of Disney in Ireland. She's also worked with Oprah. How did she do it? She shares her remarkable and unplanned path with Margaret E Ward, one that began with her bargaining with her father to stay in school at age of 14. If you've ever beaten yourself for lacking focus or commitment in your career, Trish's story is for you. From nightclub worker to pirate radio presenter, and from secondhand bookshop employee to director of a rape crisis centre - Trish's road less travelled shows that it really is OK to not have it all figured out before you take that first, second or even third step. She reveals her tools of success, which include "owning fear" and being her "strong feminist" self at work.

Podcast Length: 32:15

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Trish Long, general manager of Disney in Ireland and vice president of The Walt Disney Company

Trish Long has worked for Disney for more than two decades. Growing up in a working class housing estate in Limerick, she was the first person in her family to finish her Leaving Certificate and her career has taken many unexpected turns in the decades since.

Newly married, a 10-day-old baby and newly redundant, 2008 was an interesting year for Sara Mitchell and Gavin McCarthy. But 2009 was an even more interesting year, when the pair, a former property developer and marketing professional with no food business experience whatsoever, decided to buy a food truck and set up Ireland's first chicken rotisserie business - Poulet Bonne Femme. First there were the markets and the freezing-cold conditions of 2010, where the couple survived two months of no income right before Christmas. Then there was the disastrous music festival that nearly killed their business entirely, which included losing the weekend's meagre takings in a puddle of mud. And finally there was the stroke of genius that took Poulet Bonne Femme indoors and transformed it into a 40-job enterprise. If you're wondering how to turn any crisis into a bountiful opportunity, Sara and and Gavin can tell you how.

Podcast Length: 31:57

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