Niamh Townsend breaking new ground for tech giant Dell

Niamh Townsend isn't afraid to get her hands dirty. Dell's new general manager for Ireland knows what it's like to start at the bottom and it's given her a unique perspective on her career. "Don't be afraid to take a chance and to trust in your decision making," she said, when asked for the best career advice she could pass on.

She certainly takes her own advice. “I’ve made some bold leaps in my career in terms of industry moves, but understand that the transferable skills are there, and also there’s a capacity to learn as well,” Townsend said.

Townsend took over from Liam Halpin after he moved on to become Dell's executive director for western Europe and the CIS region. (He is now working with LinkedIn.) She has spent the past six years of her career with Dell, familiarising herself with the business, before her ambitions paid off.

Driving business

She started out with the company as technical sales manager for the tech giant’s UK small and medium-sized business division, before becoming senior sales manager in 2012. A stint as the lead of Dell’s enterprise solutions team followed, before Townsend became general manager, where she now has responsibility for driving Dell’s business on the island of Ireland.

But it was her career before Dell that laid the groundwork for all this. She started out with Enterprise Rent-a-Car, a job in which she experienced every aspect of the business, including washing the vehicles.

“They call it the ground MBA because you get to run a business, you learn everything from washing cars to managing your own profit and loss very early on,” she said. “That was a great learning curve and a great grounding for me commercially to really understand the workings of a business. Now it helps me to understand our customers and the pressures they are under to be able to deliver their bottom line.”

Enterprise was followed by a move to Donnelly Fruit and Veg, where she was business process manager. That proved a fertile learning ground for Townsend too, coming from a job where she was an expert in the company and how it worked to having to rely on and trust the expertise of others. “When I joined Donnelly, I certainly wasn’t the expert and the specialists were the people who reported to me, and their direct reports,” she said, noting that it helped when it came to making the move to Dell.

“Learning the specialist role and understanding I don’t need to know every element whether it’s fruit and veg or the inside workings of our servers, it’s those leadership capabilities of being able to help find the process improvement, the efficiencies, helping other people be better at their job, that’s what I really learned at Donnelly and that’s what I was able to transition with into Dell.” The official announcement of her appointment was made last July, and since then, Townsend has been getting to grips with her new role, keen to make a mark on the business.

It’s been a steep learning curve, she said, getting to grips with client products and holding what she describes as “intense workshops” with the client specialists on her team. “I thought it would be easier,” she admitted, but like at Donnelly, having a strong team around her while she got up to speed was key.

In her mid-30s, Townsend is the youngest person to have held the general manager’s role in Ireland. She is also the first woman to hold the job. Townsend is modest though. When it is suggested that she may be a role model for others in the industry, she laughs it off and seems a bit embarrassed. “I feel responsibility,” she said. “It’s exciting. I’ve very strong gender balance within my management team and across the business. That sends a message as well.”

Townsend’s mother served as a strong role model. A doctor by training, she was also the medical director of a hospital and now sits on the hospital board.

“My mum was a busy person, she ran a particular business, very different from mine, and has inspired me to follow my career path,” she said adding that she hopes that will be passed on to her own three-year-old daughter.

Townsend won Women Mean Business Businesswoman of the year in 2015 and was shortlisted for an Image businesswoman award the same year. The most recent accolade is being named among WXN's top 25 businesswomen in Ireland.

As far as female role models go, Townsend is a strong candidate. As a company though, Dell does a better job than most on the diversity front and has received awards for its diversity efforts. That reputation is something Townsend is keen to keep going on her watch in Ireland.

Gender balance

Among the programmes currently running is Marc (Men Advocating Real Change), with the view that engaging the full organisation around the importance of diversity of all types, including gender, is the only way to make real change. The programme, which was devised by non-profit organisation Catalyst, is designed to engage men in gender balance initiatives, and the reaction at Dell has been positive.

“Our executives are actually being champions within each of their sites, rolling that programme out to all employees who want to participate,” explained Townsend.

“There’s huge support for that. It’s great to see that engagement across the business. We recently ran a survey around the impact that it’s had, so people who had been part of the Marc programme were able to identify personally that they think it had made a difference around their thinking and behaviour, and also assess if it has made a difference within their management organisations as well. That feedback is really positive.”

Townsend was also the lead at the company’s Cherrywood office for the Women in Search of Excellence (Wise) resource group for gender balance and diversity. “That really gives an opportunity to look at career development but also how do you impact the wider community and your business through the employee resource group,” she said. “It’s important to make sure that you share your experience, and it’s sharing the challenges as well as sharing the good pieces.

“If people think it’s an easy road they might think, ‘It’s not for me, it’s not the way I’ve experienced it’. It’s important at all levels that women and men share what the whole picture is.”

As a company, Dell Ireland has been through a lot of change in recent years. When Townsend joined in 2010, the company had just shut down its manufacturing operation in Limerick with the loss of 1,900 jobs. Dell has since rebuilt its workforce here with a concentration on higher tech roles and it employs more than 2,500 people.

Tyranny of Wall Street

On a global level, Dell has also had a massive shift in recent years. The privatisation of the business was a hard-won battle for Michael Dell which culminated in the Dell founder winning out, in a $25 billion (€22 billion) deal. Back in 2013, Dell was fighting to break free of the tyranny of Wall Street and quarterly results filing that was arguably stifling innovation at the company. Once that deal was done, Dell could focus more on innovation.

The end result is a company that has pitched itself as the world’s largest startup.

Townsend said it was an exciting move for the firm. “It’s exciting to follow those things, but you don’t think they’re going to have an impact on your day-to-day role. But actually, since privatisation, the biggest impacts I’ve seen are quicker decision making, that entrepreneurial spirit coming from Michael Dell down, his energy and enthusiasm internally within the business, being able to spend that time, and being able to invest both in terms of our products and also our people for future success. Privatisation allows that to happen,” she said.

“It’s not a million miles from that [biggest start-up] and it feels very entrepreneurial, it’s one of our key tenets in our culture. When I engage with entrepreneurs in Ireland, it’s great to be able to share that with them.”

Now the company is looking ahead to the acquisition of EMC, the biggest merger to date in the tech industry. It has had mixed reactions from the industry, although Townsend said customer reaction has been positive.

Court case

It hasn’t all been plain sailing though. Dell recently found itself the subject of court case in Delaware, when a judge ruled that the buyout price for the privatisation undervalued the company.

Townsend can’t comment on either of these events, but she said it hasn’t affected staff morale at a local level at least.

The Dell role has also led to her sitting on the governing council of Ibec, a role she said has been a great opportunity.

But relaxation has to have its place too. For Townsend, that’s very much a water-based activity, with an unusual hobby that was encouraged by her brother.

“My favourite thing to do is get into the water, ideally open water,” she said. “Over the last couple of years I’ve taken up stand-up paddle boarding. It takes a lot of concentration to stay up straight, which means you can’t think about anything else. It’s really relaxing.”

Despite Ireland’s climate, there are plenty of opportunities to take part.

“My brother has gone on to do serious paddleboarding and I do it as a hobby and borrow his boards as needed,” she said. “There’s loads of opportunity in Ireland. There’s a number of stand-up paddle-boarding groups across Ireland and we’ve lots of water.”

She’s not put off by the Irish weather, laughing at the idea that it might be a bit too cold to get into the sea here at certain times of the year.

“You need a good wet-suit.”

There’s probably a metaphor for businesses in there somewhere.

CV

Name: Niamh Townsend Position: general manager, Dell Ireland Age: 35 Family: married with one daughter Something that you would expect: She is very passionate about gender balance in the workplace and has been part of a number of initiatives to address the issue. Something that might surprise you: For fun, she likes to do stand-up paddleboarding.