Throughout the morning and afternoon sessions at Higher Options there will be a number of talks taking place looking at some of the various career opportunities that can follow different study choices. Each talk will feature a panel of guests at various stages of their career and study, who will share their experiences, insights and advice.

Here are some of the speakers that attendees won’t want to miss.

Kelli O’Keeffe is the managing director of Teneo Sports Advisory.

She did a BSc in sports management at UCD, and then did an internship with a major sports management group in London, before returning home to do a master’s in marketing.

It’s a different path to the one O’Keeffe had originally hoped to take, but this route has allowed her to pursue a career within the sports industry from a different angle.

“I always loved sport and I knew I wanted to do something in sport,” she says. “I really wanted to do physio[therapy] but I didn’t get the points. But I did get the points for the sports management course, which nobody really knew anything about because it was new. And it turned out to give a really brilliant foundation.

“The people I met on that course are still throughout the sports industry today, in loads of different roles.”

O’Keeffe is hoping to show students that if they are certain they want to work in particular career that they can figure out and find a way to do it. “You’ve got to see the opportunity in those knock-backs,” she says. “Sport in Ireland has advanced so much as an industry and become far more professional. There are so many more opportunities nowadays.”

  • To hear more from Kelli O’Keeffe, come along to the Careers in Sports talk at Higher Options.

Barrister Joy-Tendai Kangere feels it’s important that students get a realistic insight into what it’s like to pursue a career as a barrister.

Alongside legal practice, Kangere is passionate about mentoring young people and encouraging students from diverse backgrounds to consider careers in law and other career opportunities.

Coming from a migrant background, Kangere wants to speak openly about the many challenges involved with pursuing a career at the bar. “I really want to speak truthfully about it. In as much as it’s glorious, in as much as you can see barristers dressed in suits and everything, there is [the] quite long hours, the sacrifices, not being able to take summer break, the financial outlay to be able to support yourself in the first few years at the bar”, she says.

“There’s intersectionality involved, being a woman; there’s a difference in how women and men are treated conventionally. And then the additional layer of being a woman from a non-traditional legal background.”

Kangere is keen to paint a clear picture of what students should expect, while at the same time explaining what a wonderful and fulfilling career the law is. And to discuss the importance of using legal skills in service of others.

  • To hear Joy-Tendai Kangere speak at Higher Options, keep an eye out for the Careers with a Law Degree talk.

Enda O’Dowd is a lecturer in product design and joint course coordinator of MSc Medical Device Design at the National College of Art and Design. He has taught product design for 22 years.

His is the side of engineering suited to people who are creative and also have analytical skills, he explains. “People who like design and communication graphics, woodwork, metalwork, or technology would be all very suitable.”

While engineering is a career often associated with having a strong aptitude for maths, that’s not necessarily a requirement for a product design engineer, O’Dowd says.

Those designing medical devices need to be not only designers but also empathetic people who can focus on the user experience, for example.

“Industrial designers traditionally have always been the kind of person who makes it usable for the person who has to use it. They call it ‘putting lipstick on the pig’. But it’s not just aesthetics. It’s very much around user experience,” he says.

O’Dowd is keen to make students aware that putting a prompt into an AI platform will not generate a design that will meet user-experience requirements.

“We have so many things to consider in product design … AI doesn’t think about the context,” he says.

That’s a factor that may well future-proof this branch of engineering, something prospective students might not have considered.

  • To hear more from Enda O’Dowd on careers and possibilities, join us at the Careers in Engineering talk at Higher Options.