WHAT have a farmer’s wife and a multi-award-winning architect have in common? In this case they are one and the same.
Johann Muldoon and her husband Gerard have two children under four and another baby due in mid-November and this little one is expect to arrive at the very auspicious time, just when Johann was to receive her MBE at Buckingham Palace, the first female in her profession to be awarded this honour. Problem? Not for this single-minded professional.
As with everything else, she tackled it head on, rang the palace, asked for an earlier date and now she will walk through those iconic gates in October.
She is managing partner of Manor Architects in Moneymore, Co Derry, with her fellow director Aiden Bradley. They have branches in Ballymoney, associate firms in Scotland, Fermanagh and Philadelphia, and she is rapidly gaining a worldwide reputation.
Earlier this year she was named Best Woman Architect in Europe at the Women in Construction and Engineering Awards where she was engaging with the construction industry’s world leaders, sharing their experiences and learning from their achievements.
One of her projects was shortlisted for the Worldwide Architectural Review Future Projects Award and she has been category winner of Irish News Workplace Employment awards for five consecutive years.
“All awards are important because they promote a female in the profession, but to receive an MBE is very special because I believe the recognition will help me in my drive to address the huge genre gap at senior levels of architecture; only 2 per cent of senior positions in practice are held by women and that’s not acceptable.”
However, it hasn’t been easy getting to the place she is today. She had a very difficult time at school; thanks to chickenpox she was almost totally deaf at age eight and was berated by some teachers for lack of attention and insubordination and bullied by classmates. An operation restored her hearing but the experience gave her a lot of strength and she learned to tackle the most difficult situations.
“I remember being made to stand on a chair in assembly with the teacher accusing me of things I hadn’t done and I just saw how ridiculous it all was. I laughed out loud!”
But it hurt, just as it did when she was studying at Queen’s University.
“A group of us went over to Oxford University for a project and I overheard a conversation where we were referred to as ‘the cowpats’.”
It all made her determined to succeed in her chosen profession, although she would say that there was no option – it chose her. Her family background is of stone masons and construction. An only child, she grew up in Castlederg – her father was a builder and her mother a psychiatric nurse – and spent a lot of her early days with her granny and grandad. Farming was all around – pet cats and dogs and freedom, just as her own children are now enjoying on their 600-acre dairy farm near Coleraine.
Determined to help women break that glass ceiling, Johann has learned to accept that this means speaking at conferences and meetings and certainly she has a lot to offer young women by way of advice.
Knowledge, determination, having a wide appreciation of life in general and a special interest in your chosen subject.
Her’s is specialist conversion architecture – lovingly restoring listed buildings to their former glory – and she’s proud of a recent conversion at St Tida's Church in Bellaghy.
Since receiving the Sir Richard Branson Award for UK Young Entrepreneur when she was 16, Johann has strived for perfection. Even though her passion is architecture, she’s fascinating company and our conversation takes in wind farms, negative and positive frequencies, Eastern philosophies and gold mining in the Sperrins – then back to architecture and her quest for equality.
Being a finalist in December’s Forward Ladies Award STEM Rising Star is just another chance to fly the flag for women in the workplace.
“I take it all with a pinch of salt,” she smiles. “Life goes in stages so I’m enjoying this stage and using it to highlight the gender gap.”
At one of those stages a long-time romance didn’t work out because it was not the right time for her as her work was blossoming. And she was straightforward in her reasoning.
“I explained that I’d get only one opportunity, either to give it my best or not. If I give you this time, I told him, it might not work out, and if it was to work out then I’d never know what I could have achieved.”
Just as well, as she has achieved so much in her personal and her work life. Married only four years ago this month, she has a wonderful family, a great work-home balance and a busy time ahead.
What’s next? Big smile and eyes bright with enthusiasm.
“More architectural challenges. I’m very fortunate to have found a career which I have an affinity with and which I truly love. Being an architect is not what I do but who I am.”
SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
FOLLOWING my story about marauding moths, this reader sends some advice on putting them off lunching on your clothes.
Anne,
Moths hate cloves, thyme and rosemary. My grandmother used them all in rotation so there were pleasant changes in aroma throughout the year.
Another brilliant deterrent is cedar wood. You can buy packets of cedar-wood shavings to use in pot pourri or cedar-wood balls will release their oil for years in cupboards and drawers.
