A New LifeEthel Power is returning to her home county as she swaps the zoo for Tipp FM. Elaine Edwards reports
Ethel Power's latest life change has brought her full circle. She has spent much of her yet young life travelling for work and business, living in different countries, learning languages and doing a series of top jobs, including the one she's just left as commercial director at Dublin Zoo.
But her new post as chief executive of Tipp FM in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, brings her back to her home county after 16 years, to a place not far from her family's dairy farm in Grangemockler. She's very happy about it.
"I'm living in a rural area about four miles from Clonmel, right by the River Suir. So I suppose I'm replacing built-up, city centre Dublin for rural Co Tipperary and I know I've made a fabulous decision. From the start, I love it," says Power (34).
Although she's lived in Britain, America, Italy and France - she speaks fluent French - she says that for the first time in her life she is living right where she wants to live.
"I've always been a country girl, but I always knew it was necessary to go away and to get experience and to learn the business world, to travel the world for culture and to look outside the box and see lots of things and to realise that the way of the world isn't necessarily the way of your own parish.
"But I always wanted to return and I never wanted to make the mistake of returning when I retired."
Power is from a family of seven children. Her mother is American; three of her siblings live in California; she has a brother in London; and the eldest is a farmer in Co Tipperary.
She attended the College of Marketing and Design and Trinity College, where she acquired a BSc in management, a diploma in advanced marketing techniques and an MA in management.
After college, she immediately left for Eurodisney, now Disneyland Paris, in 1991 and worked there during the set-up and opening of the theme park.
She later worked as national youth officer for Fine Gael, a post that gave her "a degree in psychology" because she "got inside the brains of 55-year-old TDs".
From there, she moved to Ryanair where she was head of communications for three years.
"Michael O'Leary interviewed me with his feet on the desk. It was a fantastic job. I learnt so much from him. A lot of people have the wrong impression of Michael.
"He's a very basic, down-to-earth person. He was reared on a farm and he'd never ask you to do something he wouldn't do himself," she says.
Power's career path most recently brought her to the end of a three-year stint as commercial director at Dublin Zoo, where she oversaw some major changes.
"When I joined the zoo, it was making a loss of over €100,000 a year and it will make a profit of just under 1 million for the year ended last year when I was there.
"A zoo now is a lifestyle place to go. You don't necessarily have to have kids to go there. A lot of people who don't have kids go to the zoo. The biggest competition for the zoo at the weekend is Blanchardstown shopping centre."
The new job also brings big challenges.
"Tipp FM is at a very exciting stage, because they've just been awarded a brand new 10-year commercial licence, which means Tipp FM now has a licence for the entire county and that's an audience of 110,000 people.
"The challenge is to make Tipp FM as relevant as possible to people living in Tipperary, so that they're proud of the station, so that they all tune in and so that via good programming we make it a financial success as well."
The move to Tipperary isn't just about the work. Power says she now thinks holistically about her life.
"It's not just about being CEO. I know now what I want. I want an interesting career, but, more importantly, I want a happy life, a whole life, a complete life.
"I want to be healthy, where I have a good balance between my work and my time off and in Co Tipperary I have all of that."
She's always wanted to bring her career to a point where she could go back to where she started, she says.
"And with the experience and knowledge I have I think I can really add a lot to the radio station and I plan to stay here for a long time."