Julie Orr joined Deloitte and Touche, as the Big Four player was then known, through its graduate programme for management consulting after completing a BA in political science and business at Trinity College in 2006. The Kildare woman spent nearly five years with them before the travel bug proved irresistible.
“I had always travelled – the usual J1 and other adventures to South America and southeast Asia during summers off," she says, “and I loved the great sense of freedom from living out of a backpack.”
But she had developed an interest in the less travelled parts of the world, saying that her politics courses had opened her eyes to the challenges and opportunities these countries faced. “I was fascinated by the idea of a failed state and what that actually looked like for the people who lived in it.”
While at Deloitte, Orr applied to Solidarity with Southern Sudan (SSS), an organisation that offered two-year volunteer placements in projects around long-term sustainability.
RM Block
“This appealed to me much more than the voluntourism that had started to become prevalent. SSS started talking about a potential role in South Sudan (at the time the southern part of Sudan, as it had not gained independence yet) which sounded pretty terrifying, but also exciting.
“A few months later I was on a plane to Juba, naively thinking the worst that could happen was that I’d just fly home again. This was July 2011. I arrived just before independence to streets lined with AK47-toting police officers. Being there to see the birth of a new country was incredible.”
Orr spent a couple of years in South Sudan before moving on. She wanted to stay in east Africa and was looking for positions in the region when she met Elizabeth Locker, who was looking for someone to help her and her husband to set up a horse-riding safari business.
“I moved out to Kenya for a few months to help set up what is now Olepangi Farm. Somewhere along the way, I realised I had fallen in love with the smell of rain on the parched earth, the sense of adventure and the bright Equatorial sun of this part of the world.”
Start-ups
In 2014, Orr moved to the start-up Burn Manufacturing, which manufactures and distributes clean-burning stoves but, by 2017, she had decided to focus on some short-term financial and business consulting.
Seven years later, she is still at it. She has worked with solar companies, a conservancy in the Masai Mara, a film production company, a start-up gym and many more.
Currently, Orr works with an agricultural social enterprise called Agsol which does off-grid milling of food staples for home consumption and a wine distribution company.
“Economically at the moment, things are challenging in Kenya, with prices of everything increasing – it’s very hard for people living on the breadline to survive.”
Some things, especially bureaucratic issues, can be so slow and manual in Kenya. Orr views the mechanics of business to be more efficient in Ireland in comparison. “When you are trying to act professionally and just get things done so you can move forward, it can drive you mad. Also, Kenya can still be very patriarchal which as a woman working in business can be difficult.”
For those who like to travel, Kenya has much to offer, she says – the Indian Ocean beaches, safaris, beautiful forests, hiking etc. However, the social life in Nairobi can be transient, especially in the community of people working for NGOs and the United Nations.
Orr sees plenty of opportunity in Kenya for highly skilled graduates from Ireland. For those who come, a good place to meet new people is at social events at the Kenya Irish Society. There is also a Kenya Ireland Business Association, which fosters partnerships between Kenyan and Irish businesses and helps with networking.
Nairobi has a large ex-pat community but many are settled and are by now two or three generations removed from Europeans who moved out in the last century.
“The weather is much better, however it isn’t sunny and warm all year round like I expected! Also, I have a very diverse age group of friends which I don’t think I would have in Ireland. I could be going to a friend’s 30th birthday party and another one’s 60th on any given weekend here.”
Although Orr is now settled and plans to remain in Kenya, she likes to visit Ireland. “It’s really important to me that my daughter feels Irish, rather than feeling like someone who has an Irish passport but grew up abroad. My family are in Ireland, as well as many of my oldest and best friends, and those connections are deeply important to me.”
