Inspiring Ideas @ Trinity Our webinar series for 2022 started in January with Leading from the Skies: Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas in conversation with Provost Linda Doyle – with record numbers registering to view the webinar. Alan spoke about his time in Trinity, what it meant to his family, his professional success in the aviation industry, his leadership style and what it means to him to be a champion of inclusion and diversity. Click here to register The February webinar was entitled Transforming Disability: How inclusion benefits everyone. David McRedmond (CEO, An Post), Tara Doyle (Chair & Partner, Matheson) and Marie Devitt (Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities) with Hugo MacNeill as MC for the event led an interesting and lively discussion about the latest thinking and actions from the corporate world and ideas around how to champion diversity and inclusion in the workplace. View the webinar here Join us on 30 April when Rose Anne Kenny, Professor of Medical Gerontology at Trinity and Principal Investigator, The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) joins us to discuss Age Proof – The New Science of Living a Longer and Healthier Life. Topics will include why some of us live longer than others. Why do we live twice as long today as our ancestors did 200 years ago? And what does the latest science teach us that will help us not only live longer lives, but also to live fitter, healthier and happier lives, deep into our later years? View the webinar here Gym Time with a Difference Language Gym, the online start-up launched by Trinity graduate, Ronan McGuire, encourages you to treat language- learning like muscle-building: gradually increase the difficulty and plenty of practice. Language Gym works through online meetups. Members meet in Discord, a chat app, and are split into groups of three to converse round a chosen theme. There is no video, only audio, which creates a ‘more relaxed atmosphere’, according to McGuire. A leader rotates between the groups for the hour and gives feedback. It’s not aimed at absolute beginners - you need to have basic conversational skills. Committed members move up through the levels. Language Gym currently offers German, English and Irish lessons. It was first launched as simply Deutsch Gym in February 2020, offering just German. McGuire explains the motivation for the start-up: ‘After graduating from Trinity Business School in 2013, I moved to Berlin to work for an education-tech company. I had no German and really wanted to learn but found it difficult to practice – I’d chat to my hairdresser or staff in cafés and bars, but they always responded in English. It was very frustrating. After a few years living in USA and Ireland, I returned to Berlin in 2019 and that’s when I set up Deutsch Gym.’ His priority was to enable people to practice ‘when it suits them and from the comfort of their own homes’. He had some experience of entrepreneurship – as an undergraduate he ran a natural cosmetics company, Bearna Natural Care, which was a winner in Trinity Dragon’s Den – and he knew how to code so was able to build the website himself and begin seeking clients. ‘It wasn’t a pandemic idea – but I’m sure lockdown helped build the business.’ Future plans include adding more languages when the time is right and looking into partnering with other companies and organisations. For marketing, he has used the typical avenues – ‘SEO, paid marketing, ebooks etc’ – but it can be ‘hard to get distribution that doesn’t cost a lot’. For now, he wants ‘to grow the membership base, remain independent and enjoy the ride’.
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