About us
The Meitheal is at the core of Grow Remote, meaning we were built by many hands over the past few years. In 2019, we raised government funding so that we could dedicate a team to continuing the community’s good work. Today, the board and executive team make up Grow Remote Ireland, a Company Limited By Guarantee.
If you think you’d like to work with us at Grow Remote then we’d love to hear from you. Email your CV to [email protected]
We’re growing fast and always hiring, even when we don’t have ads live. Instead, we snap up good people when we find them.
John Evoy
General Manager
John was most recently a Senior Fund Manager at Rethink Ireland. Prior to this he was the founder of the Irish Men’s Sheds Association. John has won a number of awards for his work with Men’s Sheds, and for his previous work in community development and social entrepreneurship, including an Irish People of the Year Award in 2015.
John lives on a farm in Wexford with his wife Sarah and a fluffy cat.
Cait McConn
Operations Lead
Cait is in charge of Operations at Grow Remote. Before joining the team, Cait set up and ran her own award-winning business for a decade. Cait has worked in community and business development for almost 15 years, actively promoting the economic and social development of her community with the aim of creating a better place in which to live, work and do business. She has an educational background in Business, Finance and Executive Coaching, she was President of Roscommon Chamber of Commerce and sat as a board member of Roscommon Local Enterprise Office. Cait lives in Roscommon town with her husband Eoin.
Joanne Mangan
Employers Lead
Joanne engages with employers at every stage of their remote working journey. She manages our partnerships with Ireland’s leading remote-first organisations and helps employers who want to make the transition to remote. She is a regular media contributor on the topic of remote working and is passionate about the potential of remote work to be a driver of equality, diversity and inclusion. Prior to joining the Grow Remote team she worked for a number of multinational technology companies, managing distributed teams and enabling channel partners.
June Bolneo
Learning Experience Design Lead
June is in charge of Grow Remote’s training department. Originally from the Philippines, June moved to Lisbon, Portugal in 2016. She’s been working remotely since 2012 and has been teaching people how to work remotely ever since. She has worked with local government agencies in Portugal and Philippines as a Subject Matter Expert on how to implement national remote work initiatives to make remote and flexible work available and accessible to everyone.
Dr. Eoin Byrne
Learner Success Coordinator
Dónal Kearney
Community Manager
Dónal brings an eclectic background to his work supporting the Grow Remote community, combining a diverse skillset in group facilitation, grassroots community development and creative leadership. He has held positions with the United Nations in Geneva and human rights NGOs in Ireland, the UK and Bolivia. He is co-founder of his own non-profit and has toured and recorded as a professional artist through Japan, China, Europe and North America. A vocal advocate for social inclusion and access to culture, Dónal loves bringing people together offline and strives every day for local impact. He is passionate about promoting wellness and productivity among fellow remote workers, so if you’d like to find out more about the Grow Remote community, reach out to Dónal here.
Graham Harron
Community Facilitator
Graham leads on providing high-quality remote resources for our online community. After living and working away from home for +15 years, he relocated to rural Ireland and swapped a Central European downtown lifestyle and a multinational environment for the Wild Atlantic Way! As one of our first “Remote Work Ready” course graduates and a community member thereafter – combined with his previous experience of working in a distributed team – his passion for community and the impact that remote work can have on local communities and family comes from the heart.
Kathy McKenna
Communications Lead
Kathy joined the Grow Remote team in November 2021. She holds a Master’s in Law and was previously an award-winning local broadcast journalist. She has been leading in-house communications teams since 2012. Originally from West Kerry, she relocated from Dublin to Donegal in 2020 and is passionate about the ways in which remote working can open up similar opportunities for others. Kathy believes that remote employment will have a powerful, positive impact on local communities and that it has incredible potential to remove barriers to the workforce for people with disabilities and others for whom decent jobs have, traditionally, been difficult to access.
The Board Of Directors
Tracy Keogh
Co-Founder
Tracy is a co-founder of Grow Remote and a recognised international leader in the world of remote. Having 10+ years experience in technology startups, Tracy spent the last few years in community development in regional and rural Ireland. A graduate of economics and finance from the University of Limerick, Tracy formerly worked for Bank of Ireland having set up their innovation programmes in the west.
Tomás Ó Síocháin
He is a law graduate of NUI Galway, holds a H. Dip in Applied Communications, an MBA and is a doctoral researcher in Information Systems. He is as an External Assessor for the Broadcast Authority of Ireland’s Sound and Vision Fund, a board member of Future Mobility Campus Ireland, Galway Chamber, Gnó Mhaigh Eo and was the inaugural Chair of the Regional Skills Forum West.
John Riordan
Renate Kohlmann
Laura Hanlon
Laura is currently studying an MSc in Electronic and Computer Technology from DCU and a previous graduate of Sports and Exercise Engineering from NUI Galway.