Driving cross border innovation and female entrepreneurship, with force of nature Mary McKenna

Great interview with force of nature Mary McKenna, co-founder of @AwakenHub, Irish entrepreneur, pollinator, people collector, blogger, MC, connector, non exec, cheerleader, friend, investor, mentor, mentee See more on here blog here https://kickingassets.co.uk/about/ Mary is a technology entrepreneur & these days angel investor. She co-founded wildly successful online learning company Learning Pool in 2006 on the back of a long local government career and a spell as a Silicon Valley dotcommer. She exited the company in May 2014 in order to get back into startup land. She is interested in helping start & grow indigenous Irish & British tech companies and especially in working with young and female entrepreneurs. One of Said Business School's (University of Oxford) Resident Experts, an Entrepreneur in Residence at Catalyst Inc (formerly the Northern Ireland Science Park) and a trustee of CAST (the Centre for Acceleration of Social Technology). She loves the arts and have been a non executive director on the board of Derry’s Millennium Forum & Theatre for many years. I'm also a trustee of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). On the London board of the Irish International Business Network and proud member of the Global Irish Network. In the 2014 New Year’s Honours she was awarded the MBE by HM the Queen for services to digital technology, innovation and learning - which you have to admit is pretty darned cool. Right now interested in talking to people about non exec positions in tech startups or scaleups and happy to speak at relevant events or write articles for publication on any of her specialist topics - how to build a kick ass network, how to scale your startup, how to build a digital business, how to build a company with a great culture She has sat at Buzz Aldrin's feet & listened to his stories, disco danced with Leonard Cohen at Coachella and joined Robert Plant in singing gospel songs with Wanda Jackson at Pappy & Harriet's in the Californian desert. Follow me on Twitter at @mmarymckenna