This Wild Geese slot was originally designed to allow successful emigrants share some tips with generations who might follow, and sometimes that is precisely what happens.
When Galway man Killian Moyles was researching marketing agencies in Chicago in 2020, he came across an old Wild Geese feature on fellow Irish man Fergus Rooney, whose early relationship with an up-and-coming politician in the Windy City called Barack Obama, had proved fortuitous. Rooney had set up a successful firm called Agency EA, organising innovative events and experiences for corporate clients. He had also planned campaign and inauguration events for the former US president.
In that 2017 column, Rooney advised young professionals to steer away from traditional career paths.
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This was music to the ears of Moyles, who had qualified as a primary schoolteacher during the crash. With poor work prospects in Ireland at the time, Moyles had taken teaching posts abroad, including stints in Spain, Australia, New Zealand and the Falkland Islands, before settling in London.
RM Block
By 2020 Moyles had married his long-time partner, Sarah, a native of Chicago and the couple set their sights on a move to the US. Moyles was also looking for a change of career direction and had undertaken a master’s in digital marketing back in the University of Galway, known then as NUIG.
“In the column, Fergus was saying that people out here are not afraid to restart their careers in their late twenties and early thirties and that this was a good place to reinvent yourself,” Moyles recalls.
“He had also said that the Irish are good at helping each other and not to be afraid to ask for help. I thought if this guy thinks like that, he might be interested in me, even though I had no event management or marketing experience.”
Following a LinkedIn message exchange, the two men met in the company’s downtown office in Chicago in June 2021. “I arrived suited and booted, which wasn’t the dress code. The offices were almost empty as we were still in Covid.”
While there wasn’t a position available at the time, Rooney recognised that Moyles had acquired useful digital skills in his master’s degree and his business was rapidly pivoting to virtual events because of the ongoing pandemic. With nobody in the office at the time with that skill set, Moyles found himself at the right place at the right time and the two agreed a 10-week trial period.
“I liked the people and I could see there was a need. Clients were looking at these virtual platforms, and they needed help. It all happened rapidly. I upskilled very quickly as the industry changed.”
When Covid passed there was an appetite to get back to in-person events. “This was seen as an antidote to the fact that we live online, with so much screen time. My role changed to areas such as digital installations for the on-site experience – large display screen, interactive technology, virtual reality components,” he says.
Five years later Moyles is still there, having moved 18 months ago to a business development role.
“It is not a short-term hard sales role. It’s a much longer cycle, building relationships over one to five years that will lead to business coming to us and I like getting out and building those longer-term connections.”
Agency EA employs more than 100 people and counts Meta, Salesforce, Intuit and HubSpot on its client roster.
Work continues with the Obamas, with the agency heavily involved in the recent launch of the Obama Foundation Centre on a 19-acre site in Chicago. The building, an evolution of the idea of a presidential library, also features a museum, a basketball court, gardens, dining facilities, a playground and educational facilities.
Moyles has settled easily into life in Chicago.
“It’s a beautiful city all the time and it’s a nice city to live in three seasons of the year but it’s a brutal place to live in the winter. It’s cold and icy and you understand why retirees like to escape to Florida then.
“You try to seek out Irish people and I’ve been fortunate to get to know a lot of people at the consulate and in IDA Ireland. Getting to have a beer with Irish people is emotionally important when you are a long distance from home.
“It’s a city that’s been very good to me at a crossroads in my career. I didn’t know what America was going to hold for me and it has provided me with great opportunities. It has a frontier mindset that you can go and make something of yourself, but it’s on you to do it.
“That does assume that everyone has the same opportunity to do that, which isn’t always the case.”
While Moyles misses his Irish family and returns when he can, one of the benefits of the move to Chicago has been the presence of Sarah’s parents, who live in the same suburb of Beverly on the southern outskirts of the city. The couple are raising two young children, and having loving and supportive grandparents on their doorstep is a great privilege, he says.
The couple were able to buy the house in Beverly for “half of what it would have cost in Galway and a third of what it would have cost in Dublin”.
“It is helpful for me to live in this area, where many Irish emigrants settled over the years. It’s a mix of Republicans and Democrats. There are a lot of police, firefighters, emergency service workers, many of whom vote Republican. It helps you understand other perspectives and not to have a narrow view of someone based on how they vote.
“It hasn’t changed my politics, but it has softened me to other viewpoints. That’s really important right now, regardless of where you sit politically. When the dialogue drops out, the polarisation exacerbates.”
