What made you choose Chartered Accountancy and if you weren’t a Chartered Accountant what other career path would you have followed?
I would like to say that my choice for Chartered Accountancy was the outcome of a long and considered process, however it wasn’t. I was in King’s Inns studying to become a barrister and the reality dawned on me towards the end of the academic year that I was not going to be able to financially support myself in the barrister apprenticeship process in Dublin. In short, I needed a job.
I was lining up a job as a security guard when my cousin, an auditor in KPMG at the time said to me that their tax department were doing a late hiring of for their tax graduate programme. I figured “tax is law” and I would get paid to study and get additional qualifications, so it all sounded like a good deal. I submitted an application in July in 2011, was interviewed in August, was offered the job an hour after the interview and started in KPMG two weeks after that.
Can you tell us about your career path and how you got to where you are now?
I did my training contract in KPMG’s Financial Services Tax Department. I didn’t know a debit from a credit when I started but got all my exams.
After I came to the end of my training contract, I decided to see if I could dip back into legal waters and joined Eversheds as a Tax Associate. I spent a year and a half there but I was on a tax team of two (that’s counting myself), and missed having the resources of large tax department.
So I rejoined KPMG Tax in September 2015 as a manager and moved up the ranks to Tax Director.
I always had my ups and downs mental-healthwise but when I got to the workplace, I really started to struggle. I got some help at various times in my career and when the firm arranged for me to get some executive coaching when I was going through bad patch, I just fell in love with coaching.
At the same time as all of the above was happening, I was getting some help via the firm’s EAP with some counselling and it was a counsellor who flagged that I may wish to investigate further whether some of the issues I was facing could stem from me being autistic. I was taken aback but did look into further and found it explained a lot of the issues I had faced throughout my life – I was assessed and diagnosed in 2021.
What came out of coaching process was a clear understanding of my values and what fulfilled me. Helping others was high on the list, as was learning. So I ended up studying coaching part-time in the evenings and weekends with Kingstown College and once I qualified, KPMG appointed me to their internal coaching panel to coach junior staff as a side of desk role.
I was also learning all I could about autism, which then broadened into learning about neurodiversity and inclusive practices and I thought it was amazing, but there was very little being said about as far as I could see in Irish workplaces at that time.
I was tossing around the idea in my head of setting up my own coaching business and maybe I could also help make Irish workplaces more inclusive for neurodivergent people as part of it. But I thought it was too fanciful and “out there”, I’ll just stick to being a tax consultant and maybe just help people in a smaller way within the firm. Then my mother passed away in January 2023. For anyone who has lost a parent or close family member, there is often a perspective shift that comes with it. I figured “Life is too short”.
I took my time to ensure it was the right decision and not being made on a whim. I left KPMG in October 2023 and launched Braver in February 2024 as an executive coaching and neurodiversity consultancy. We have been really fortunate to have got off to a great start and I have to thank the likes of Chartered Accountants Ireland, KPMG and others outside of professional services like Codex for being for such great partners to work with.
How has being a Chartered Accountant helped you in your new career, given it is so different to what you have done before?
Setting up your own business, knowing everything that I do thanks to all the experience I have gained and contacts I had made, was much smoother than for others.
I did the Local Enterprise Office Start Your Own Business course and for others the prospect of accounts, CRO filings for establishing a company and tax filings was the most daunting. I didn’t bat an eyelid at those aspects, I was more worried about how to go about networking and social media (I gave up on all of it except LinkedIn, no TikToks from me).
It also offers a level of financial security that I am grateful for – despite making a big jump into a new career, I am risk averse. I am lucky enough to be doing tax consulting work on a part-time basis with a small tax consultancy from April 2025. It gives me financial security, the scope to take bigger swings with Braver and not compromise on our services and, speaking frankly, it is doing wonders for our mortgage application.
What Institute services have you availed of and to what extent have you been involved with the Institute?
Chartered Accountants Ireland were Braver’s first client and I am hugely grateful to the team in there for taking a chance on a new business and one of their own. I provided neurodiversity training to CAI staff back in August 2024 and I think that was a real launchpad from which Braver’s success has grown.
I have been very involved in institute events and publications over the last 18 months and I think that’s just a sign of the high importance being placed on inclusion on their Institute’s agenda. I know that is being replicated at a global level as I was invited to deliver a session to the neurodiversity leads of the each of the Member Institutes of Chartered Accountants Worldwide.
As for Institute services, I availed of more services funnily after I set up my coaching business as I kept my membership live and CPD up to date (just in case). When I have client meetings in town spread over the day, I will often stop into CA House as my hub to work from for a few hours during the day, I don’t think enough members realise the facilities are there and available for their use – it’s not just for students. I also use meeting rooms in CA House from time to time (members can use the meeting room).
It was actually through Dave O’Riordan in the Careers Team that I got placed for my part-time tax consulting job back in April 2025 and Dave was a big help as part of the process. I would recommend reaching out to him if you are an employer looking to find somebody or trying to a find a role that fits for you.
There are also so many events taking place in CA House throughout the year and it’s through those events that I made some of my best learnings and contacts. Whether that was a Learning to Network evening session I attended (crucial for any small business owner) or attending last year’s DCU Access to the Workplace launch event, which started a conversation between me and Codex Office Solutions, which turned into my biggest partnership of 2025.
What career advice would you give to other members based on your own experience?
Know what your values are – find out what drives you in your work. If you know what your values are, it is much easier to identify and prioritise your long-term goals and why you like or dislike some aspects of a job. That will allow to figure out whether you and your job / organisation are in alignment.
Many issues in the workplace come from a misalignment of expectations and people making too many assumptions of each other. Whether it’s with your manager or report, please just communicate with them, clarify what their expectations are for you and yours for them and ask them for feedback.
Find a mentor. I’ve had a few over the course of my career in KPMG and it just makes a world of difference to have somebody in your corner. Even when I was setting up Braver, a very experienced coach and dear friend who was in the process of retiring actually volunteered to mentor me and we met regularly over the first year, we discussed everything from coaching ethics to business strategy to pricing to route to market. That helped massively. I asked him why he was doing this and he said “When I was starting out, I didn’t have a clue. But a senior coach threw the ladder down for me so now it’s my turn to throw the ladder down for you.”
If you are in the early to middle stages of your career, find a mentor. And if you are somebody who in middle to later stages, particularly if you benefitted from mentorship in the past, pay it forward, throw the ladder down for a colleague.
What achievement are you proudest of in your life to date?
Quitting smoking and drinking. I’m healthier and happier now than I’ve ever been.
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