My Career: ‘Being a business owner has risks.. the irregularity of income is real’

Name: Dr Sinéad O’Donovan

Age: 39

Lives: Timoleague, West Cork

Job title: Leadership Physiology Consultant, transforming leadership by training the body, not just the mind.

Salary bracket: €50,000+

Education background: In sixth year, my plan was to become a dietitian, but my dream was always to go to UCC.

To get there, I chose the alternative path of nutritional science, with the intention of applying for the postgraduate in my final year.

In 2008, I started the postgraduate application, and as part of that you had to shadow a dietitian. During my shadowing experience I had the realisation that a dietitian only works with sick people, and I knew I needed to get to people before they got sick. In my final year, I knocked on the door of lecturers I had come across and asked them about their research opportunities, which led me to my PhD journey from 2009 to 2014.

Hobbies: Running, reading, hiking, travel, learning about health, business development, and spending time with family and friends.

Describe your job in five words: I train leadership’s missing layer.

Describe yourself in five words: Driven, solution-oriented, curious, empathetic, courageous.

Personality needed for this kind of work?

You need to be incredibly curious, and comfortable holding space for people at their most exhausted and overwhelmed. Building trust is everything, because trust is what allows someone to be honest about where they’re really struggling. You have to be agile, and able to read people quickly, because everyone has their own story. Walk into a room with a leadership team of 20 people, and you have 20 different sets of needs in front of you. That’s where the agility matters most: meeting each person exactly where they are.

Ultimately, this leads to great fulfilment as I see clients regain their energy, capacity and confidence, so that they can lead and live their lives, both at work and, more importantly, at home.

How long are you doing this job?

I’ve been working in leadership 11 years.

How did you get this job?

After completing my PhD, I focused on academia, pursuing postgraduate research and working on large European research projects. But academia became isolating, especially once I moved from fieldwork into analysis, and I realised I needed to work with people.

That’s what led me to the huge pivot: joining ALDI as an Area Manager in 2015. Over my career there I worked as Area Manager across Ireland and the U.S, and also had the opportunity to work in the corporate head office as a buyer. There, I led Training and Development, travelling across upstate New York delivering programmes on change management and transformational leadership.

During covid, I started working one-on-one with women, a volunteer role, to help them through the overwhelm so many people were feeling. That experience opened my eyes. I saw first-hand how much fulfilment came from supporting someone as they moved from exhausted and overwhelmed to in control and excited for their future again.

When I returned from the U.S, I knew I needed to build my own leadership consultancy. I’d identified a real gap in leadership training, both in Ireland and the U.S. In January, 2026, I set up The Leadership Biome, and I haven’t looked back.

Do you need particular qualifications or experience?

A science background helps, but it’s not essential. What matters more is real experience of leadership under pressure.

My PhD in Nutritional Science gives me the research grounding, and over a decade as a senior executive gave me the lived experience of what leadership actually costs. You need both the evidence and the scars.

Describe a day at work:

No two days look the same, which is exactly why I love this work. One day I might be delivering an interactive training session, standing in front of a room of leaders, walking them through the science of why their body reacts the way it does under pressure, and giving them tools to shift it there and then. Another day, I’m one-on-one with a client, working through a leadership programme session by session, watching someone go from overwhelmed to genuinely regulated over weeks.

Behind the scenes, there’s research: staying current on the science so everything I teach is relevant and backed by science.

There’s writing proposals for organisations who want to bring this work to their leadership teams. There’s content, because most people have never heard leadership described this way, so part of the job is simply explaining that the gap exists. And there’s the unglamorous end too: emails, admin, and the quiet planning that makes the delivery days possible.

How many hours do you work a week?

Very different from my corporate days. I aim for 40 to 50 hours a week, depending on workload and deliverables.

Is your industry male or female dominated?

Senior leaders overall are a fairly good balance of men and women. But C-suite is still male dominated, and what’s genuinely concerning is the declining number of women holding senior roles.

Does this affect you in any particular way?

Yes. I want to ensure women are given the support to hold those roles, the capacity to lead them, and the confidence to go further.

Is your job stressful? How? Rate it on a scale of 1-10: Being a business owner is stressful. The work itself is deeply rewarding, and there’s real satisfaction in it.

What’s genuinely stressful is the complexity of running a business alone: the irregularity of income as a new founder, marketing, sales, delivery, and everything else that comes with it. It means I have to constantly practise what I teach. 6/10.

Do you work with others or on your own?

I work on my own. It’s just me right now, though I collaborate with clients and organisations closely on every programme.

When do you plan to retire or give up working?

I don’t see retirement in the traditional sense. The work I do is so connected to who I am. How I deliver it will definitely change over time. I look at my dad, who’s 73 and still works part-time. He’s such a community man, and the connection with his customers every day keeps him young and alive. That’s the model I want: not stopping, just changing shape.

Best bits: Watching leaders regain their energy and confidence. Seeing them sleep properly again, put boundaries around work, and have real energy left for their lives, not just their jobs. When you’re sitting in your rocking chair, you won’t be thinking about the hours you didn’t work. You’ll be thinking about the time you didn’t spend with the people who matter. When I hear that a leader now has the capacity to maintain a high-performing role and still be present for their family, my job is done.

Worst bits: Being a business owner has its own risks. The irregularity of income is real, and so is the stress of managing everything yourself. Right now, I’m the bottleneck of the business, which means it can’t scale past what I personally have hours for. There’s constant administration underneath the actual work. And you have to hold two timelines in your head at once: what needs doing today, and where the business needs to be in five years, while staying strategic through all of it.

Advice to those who want your job?

Be really curious, and have the courage to ask. If you never ask, the answer is always no. Be brave, and find mentors, people in your space you can learn from, because they will support you.

Any other comments?

Recently, I was sent this saying: “At first, it’s easy to stay employed, but the real struggle is staying in a job you’ve outgrown, year after year. At first, being self-employed is hard, uncertain, worrying. But over time, it gets easier.” This really helps when you know why you stepped into self-employment. I live by a quote from Jamie Kern Lima: “Know your why and fly, girl, fly.” That’s exactly what I’m doing!