I grew up in a 19th century farmhouse in County Wexford, the third of four children on a working farm. While my brother was drawn to machinery and farming, I was drawn to buildings — especially the design, setting and stories of historic buildings.

Before I left primary school, I already knew I wanted to be an architect.

At 23, I qualified. I designed houses and commercial buildings across the region, guiding projects through planning and construction. The Celtic Tiger was roaring. I was living the career I’d imagined since childhood.

Then the doubt set in.

I felt overwhelmed by professional liability, convinced my technical knowledge fell short. I kept these fears to myself, which made them grow. By 28, I’d left — telling myself I wanted a wider perspective on urban development. The truth was more complicated.

I spent a year at the London School of Economics, studying the political and economic drivers of how cities develop or fall behind. Fellow students from multiple disciplines, case studies from across the globe. It was exactly the perspective I needed.

In the nine years that followed, I designed and managed infrastructure projects in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Niger, and the Central African Republic. In these assignments, focus was everything. I delivered clean water systems for rural villages. Got my orthopaedic clinic design for northern Yemen through approvals, despite armed conflict. Built my teams' skills and established project management systems.

The work was fulfilling. But I repeated the same mistakes: trying to do everything myself, feeling overwhelmed by deadlines, not asking for help.

The turning point came with leadership training at IMD in Switzerland.

My biggest takeaway: I’d spent years treating every problem as a task to complete alone, when the real skill was building relationships that make complex projects possible. I needed to be less task-focused and more present with the people involved.

That’s why, in 2020, I joined Ireland’s diplomatic service.

Diplomacy is relationship work. I spent six years building partnerships — with government departments, UN agencies, development banks, and counterparts who saw the world very differently. Nothing moved without trust and goodwill. I learned to navigate competing interests, and realised that what moves complex projects forward isn't control — it's relationships.

Then, in January 2023, I visited Hamburg.

I spent three days exploring the Elbphilharmonie, the brick expressionist Chilehaus, the new developments in Speicherstadt. And I realised something I’d been avoiding: despite the unusual career path, architecture had never left me. It’s still the first thing I notice in any city, by a long shot.

I decided to return to archtiecture, professionally. But I wasn’t going back to design for its own sake.

In 2008, I’d bought a house during the boom. Then came the crash — negative equity, a property I couldn’t sell, in a location with few jobs and poor transport links. I was tied for years to a home that didn’t connect to anything. That experience influenced how I think about city planning.

Housing that works isn’t just well-designed. It’s integrated — with transport, with employment, with services and community. When those connections are missing, even a good building fails the people who live there.

We won’t solve the housing crisis with design and planning alone. Years of missed targets and rising costs make that clear. We also need inclusive capital — ways to fund good development. And we need cooperation across disciplines — architects, developers, financiers, and communities working as one system, not separate silos.

That’s where I’m focused now. Bringing together the technical design skills, the stakeholder navigation, and the hard-won lessons about asking for help — to move projects from idea, through funding, to delivery.

If you’re a development professional working in that messy middle between design, funding and construction, I’d love to hear from you. I'm writing about how projects actually get built — and preparing to put these ideas into practice in Paris.

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