Meet the Cork woman who left the corporate world to pursue her passion 

A one-time international operations manager for a leading software and services provider, Cork woman Maria Gillen turned her passion for storytelling into a full-time occupation.

Having spent two years from 2020 to 2022 as Artistic Director for the Listowel International Storytelling Festival, and winning numerous storytelling competitions, such as Finuge and The Butter Roads in Blarney, Maria is well known on the storytelling circuit.

She also represented Ireland at the UNESCO-backed International Storytelling Festival in Morocco.

Maria grew up in Mayfield and enjoyed a childhood filled with stories.

I caught up with her recently at the charity radio station Cork City Community Radio, where she has a weekly hourly slot, delighting listeners with imaginative tales.

Her career path, like her stories, has many twists and turns.

Maria spent 22 years as a Crisis Manager in the global business environment.

“I’ve always told stories, but I haven’t always told stories for a living,” she says.

Maria says that it was her mother, grandmother and great grandmother who told her stories.

Her great grandmother, whose parents lived through the Irish famine, was a ‘Bean Feasa’, or wise woman.

Maria was 14 when her great grandmother died.

The Mayfield woman explains how her grandmother would ask her the Ceist Eolais (wise question) if she wanted Maria to come up with an answer for herself.

In the business world, Maria sometimes found herself asking “what would my grandmother say?”

When Maria’s secondary school education ended, there was a recession in the country.

“When I finished school in 1984, you’d take any job you could get, the pharmaceutical and computer companies hadn’t really taken root in Cork yet. I got a job in Cash’s, and it was a miracle to get that job. It was lovely”.

From there, Maria took on various jobs in administration, “The admin roles were getting more senior as I went along.

“I got involved in a start-up company, Space Craft Industries (SCI) in Fermoy, they made parts for the space industry. We went to a team of over 500 in that first year and I became senior administrator. I loved the start-ups”.

Maria’s ambition and proven success led her to other industries.

“I wanted to get a broader breadth of experience, I always ended up in sales, I think the gift of the gab helped.”

She then moved to England to work in the telecommunications sector.

“In the late ’90s I remember my boss telling me that one day we could do our banking online and I was like, ‘Sure God love us’.”

Returning to Ireland in 2004, Maria joined the utilities company Amdocs, and was promoted to Europe, Middle East and Africa Operations manager.

“I noticed when I was managing this culturally diverse area, a lot of the things that we were being taught, I’d heard them somewhere before, and then I realised it was from my mother, my granny, and my great granny”.

“Emotional intelligence, transactional analysis and seven habits for success were the big topics of the day.

“I love expanding my mind and I decided to study psychotherapy at the weekends.”

Maria says she used storytelling in her work to help reduce staff turnover and in crisis management.

“In stories, you can say the unsayable,” she explains.

“Listening to my mother’s voice in my head, it would put the person in the centre, bring the humanity back.”

Why did Maria leave the corporate world?

“I became so interested in the positive effect of storytelling, I thought, this is what I want to be doing with my life.

“It was a huge wrench, and a hard decision to leave the corporate environment with all its security. In the meantime, I went back to college to do a Masters in Drama Therapy.

“When you’re out in the storytelling world, it just makes you feel alive.”

Maria says that her stories can be about anything, from Ireland’s Ancient East and the Wild Atlantic way to stories she co-created with people.

The Cork woman mentions one called ‘Grumpy Gobs’, which she and her young niece created together and is popular in schools.

Maria works as a storyteller, psychotherapist and drama therapist and uses storytelling in these latter two disciplines also.

In a society where our phones and social media absorb a lot of our time and artificial intelligence is thriving, it seems storytelling is more relevant than ever as a way of preserving our heritage and keeping our creativity alive.

Maria strongly believes in the healing power of the story, and how stories can be used to solve problems and learn things.

“If I had a magic wand, I would make storytelling a subject in schools for kids, because it covers every subject, it brings it to life and cements it in the cinema of their internal world. It gives us a sense of place and makes us brilliant communicators.”