'The accent works in your favour': Meet the Munster Mafia and the new Irish of New York
Whether it’s luck, or determination, there’s a slew of young accented expats that are quietly shaping a new identity for the Irish in New York
New York lets you know St Patrick’s Day is coming: you can hear the hum of Danny Boy from early March, shamrock themed t-shirts and cakes spring up on shelves and Guinness specials hit the chalkboards of Midtown.
About one in eight New Yorkers claim Irish ancestry and the whole city leans heavily into craic and cliche for most of March. Even new NYC Mayor and fan favourite Eric Adams spent the first Sunday of the month in Queens, sporting an Aran jumper and a tricolour sash, where he declared “The luck of the Irish is with all New Yorkers!”
Whether it’s luck, or determination, there’s a slew of young accented expats that are quietly shaping a new identity for the Irish in the city. Irish people have helped to mould the history of New York, with well-documented triumphs across legacy industries from construction to hospitality.
Now, there’s a wave of entrepreneurs and storytellers leading the field in tech, media and finance — painting boardrooms in skyscrapers and startups in Brooklyn, a new and subtle shade of green. Grit and the desire to succeed are key markers for the Irish identity, so New York is a natural fit.
Shaunagh Connaire and Vinny Breslin live in the East Village with their two young sons. The Longford and Donegal natives are two of a group of Irish that live in the family-friendly neighbourhood just above 14th street and Avenue A, called Stuytown.
Their New York story started back in 2014 with a brief stint in Bushwick, while Shaunagh was recovering from a particularly tough journalism assignment and Vinny was incubating his first company. They returned three years later, and settled briefly in the cool Brooklyn enclave again, “before we realised we weren’t cool enough” jokes Shaunagh.
If raising toddlers in Manhattan isn’t testament enough to their coolness, Shaunagh is also an Emmy-nominated reporter, previously at Channel 4, who now is Director at The Clooney Foundation for Justice where she leads efforts to bring accountability and transparency to judicial systems and trials around the world.
The face of one of the world’s highest-profile human rights organisations, Shaunagh leans into her Irishness all year around. “I think with journalism and now in an NGO, the nature of the work that means you’re in some way acting for or advocating for the underdog. I always think the Irish accent or mentality works in your favour.”
She jokes about growing up in Longford and being the underdog, but turns serious as she thinks about how her identity plays a role in work and life in New York. “You can just find the common ground. I absolutely use my Irishness in those situations.”
Vinny meanwhile just raised half a million dollars for his tech company UpListing, a property management system for Vacation Rental owners, operators and managers. Running a business from an East Village apartment with two children under the age of three is “hardcore” he admits. But the pair are in the city for the vast opportunity it offers, something that’s now something they want to replicate for their sons. “We hustled to get to where we are in our jobs now. Like every single Irish person here, you have to fight for it,” says Shaunagh.
Irish tech startups including Vinny’s are part of a growing community of entrepreneurs and founders in the city, from Oisin Hanrahan, who founded Handy and is now CEO of publicly-traded Angi, to Sarah Friar, the CEO of Next Door. There’s a whole new breed of tech stars who are subbing luck for perseverance. Bringing the best of home to the blocks and Avenues around Wall St can mean finding a balance for the new Irish entrepreneurs.
When he’s feeling nostalgic, Daragh Murphy enjoys a cheeky pint of Guinness in Swifts on the Bowery. The Irish bar is a stalwart for expats and East Villagers alike and also happens to serve very good curry chips (Dermot Kennedy popped up there with a guitar one Monday night recently, to the delight of everyone at happy hour).
The Kildare native founded one of the buzziest companies in Fintech in 2020. Imprint is a payments and rewards company that works with brands to bypass traditional banks and reduce costs, which they can pass on to the consumer. It has raised $53 million dollars to date from top-tier backers including Stripe, venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins and chat show host James Corden. Daragh lives in the city with his wife, and before Imprint used his UCD law degree to lead strategy at WeWork.
Ireland is more innovative in the space he outlines, highlighting digital payments, but New York has a “very clearly defined culture of how you start a company and raise money,” which makes it an excellent home for an Irish entrepreneur. Does he consider himself tenacious? Yes but only as determined as the next Irish person. And anyway, it serves him in business here: “You get to the point, don’t take yourself too seriously and it goes a long way.”
Money that flows into companies like Daragh’s comes increasingly in the form of venture capital. One of the leading young venture capitalists in the city hails from Armagh. If you've heard of the latest digital payments company or ever used a 15-minute delivery service, Andrew Steele has probably backed or certainly talked to the business. Activant Capital is a growth stage investor writing cheques between $40-$100 million for the most interesting companies in e-commerce infrastructure. Steele leads those investments from New York because it “spans beyond people in tech, there’s folks in fashion, media and finance who are all building dynamic companies.”
He calls Soho home (and is also partial to an occasional visit to Swifts) and credits the ability to tell a good story with some of the Irish success. A crucial part of building a company is outlining a vision and that’s where Andrew feels Irish in New York do well. “You have to tell a compelling story, you’re getting people excited about a mission to build something. You have to convince smart, well-paid people to come on this journey with you.”
Storytelling is what generations of Irish in this city have been doing, some professionally. On Bloomberg, financial reporter and Limerick native Vonnie Quinn deciphers the day’s business and technology news as one of the top anchors. She has interviewed presidents, prime ministers and CEOs.
It would be remiss of me to talk about Irish journalists without mentioning the Munster media mafia of Donie O’Sullivan of CNN and Kerry, who became a national treasure during the grim events of the Capitol insurrection, and Conde Nast’s Cork EIC Samantha Barry who led the digital transformation of Glamour Magazine.
And there’s the Irish Examiner’s own sports columnist, Brooklyn-based John Riordan, who can be regularly found explaining the rules of baseball to more recent arrivals. Donie, Samantha and Vonnie are three of the most visible successes in the city but as it emerges from two of the toughest years in recent history, Irish graduates and professionals are slowly starting to arrive again, empowered by their predecessor’s successes.
As the aran sweater-wearing Mayor Eric Adams Mayor declared on a cold green day in March, “We are back to being this exciting place we call New York.”
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