Reclaim Your Dreams: In an Uncertain Future Build the Career That is Closest to Your Heart

There is no typical day on the UCD Innovation Academy’s Graduate Certificate in Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. “I liken it to an advent calendar,” says Dr. Lollie (Lorraine) Mancey, the programme director. “Every day you will open a door and you won’t quite know what you’re going to get.” She continues, “I’ve designed this course so that it replicates the entrepreneurial experience. When you’re an entrepreneur, anything can happen on a single day.”

This graduate certificate course was launched in 2008 during the recession as a way in which to help those who lost their jobs at that time to reimagine their future. Fast forward to 2022, and a dramatically changing job market in a dramatically changing world, and this course continues to be more relevant than ever.

Participating students range in age from 25 to 65. They may be life long learners who are feeling a little bit stuck. They may be pivoting out of one job and into another. They may have found themselves out of a job post pandemic. For many it is possibly the first time they have taken stock of their careers in a long time, and they are approaching the future with a mix of excitement and trepidation. Wherever they are on their career trajectory, students are looking for a way to reclaim the dreams and aspirations they may have put aside years ago. “This course acts as the bridge between those two spaces in their life,” Lollie says.

For students who decide to take this course there is often a tension. On one hand they know that they want to change their career path, and that they have been stymied for a variety of different – often societal – reasons. On the other, Lollie is often faced with students who are struggling with the very real affliction that is “impostor syndrome.” Lollie is quick to help students move past this. She cites leading entrepreneurial thinker, Saras Sarasvathy, the woman behind The Entrepreneurial Mindset, and the practical idea of the bird in the hand: what is it that you love, and that you are good at, how wide is your network, and how do you tap into it.

She also works with students who feel like perhaps they are “past it” and potentially at a disadvantage because they are older. Lollie dismisses this sentiment “I’m on a bit of a campaign to get older people moving into the entrepreneurial field,”she says, and cites data that shows there is a correlation between age and experience and success when it comes to launching a new business: the older you are, the more likely you will be to succeed.

The cultural landscape in Ireland has shifted. From the outside, Ireland has become a tech centered economy. However, Lollie maintains that a lot of tech workers come from abroad to take up those career opportunities. People in Ireland see that success but don’t necessarily feel that they are a part of it. Lollie argues that they are missing the opportunities that orbit the tech economy. “There’s a lot of opportunity in Ireland at the moment,” she says. “It’s only a question of how to harness it.”