Clare woman in world’s top tech 50

A CLARE woman has been named among the world’s top 50 most influential women working in technology.

Jacinta Tobin, originally from Kilmaley but now living in San Francisco, joins a list of names that includes Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, Meg Whitman, CEO Hewlett Packard and Marissa Mayer CEO of Yahoo.
Jacinta received the honour from Silicon Valley Global Magazine.

Speaking about her inclusion on the list, Jacinta said, “It was initiated by the Irish Technology Leadership Group, I didn’t know anything about it. I was named among the top 50 Irish people in technology before but I didn’t know this was happening. I was thrilled, but shocked. It certainly is a nice group of people to be named alongside.”

In recent years she has been senior vice president for worldwide sales and business development and later chief marketing officer for Cloudmark Inc, a leading provider of security solutions, protecting over one billion users from spam, viruses and phishing.

The DCU graduate is currently on a career break, spending more time with her two-year-old son Cian. She is now planning to consult Irish businesses hoping to break through to the US market.

Jacinta is also an ambassador on the board of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, a global organisation involving some of the largest mobile phone operators and technology companies in the world. She was instrumental in organising a major meeting of the group in Dublin a number of years ago and there are plans for another meeting to take place next year.
“The group is there to fight cyber crime, SMS and MMS abuse, email and internet abuse. A lot of brilliant technologists come together to work on this, fighting the good fight if you like. I had been Cloudmark’s representative on the board and, when I took a break, they had a vote to nominate me to continue on with the title of ambassador. I was really honoured,” she said.

She has over 20 years experience in leading global sales and marketing for high tech companies, starting her career in 1990 with Kindle Systems, now part of Mysis Group. She became a senior executive, growing distribution channels and sales across 64 countries. She also founded Quantam Internet and has acted as an adviser to several start-ups.

“I got out of college in 1990 and we were still in recession, with 20% unemployment. The best opportunities were to work for software companies and it was just luck that I chose that career early on,” she told The Clare Champion.

Jacinta is the daughter of Jim and Maura Tobin, who owned Tobins in Kilmaley, now the Kilmaley Inn. Family is clearly important to the 44-year-old. She makes regular trips back home and she made the decision to take time out of her career to spend “precious time” with her son.

Jacinta first moved to San Francisco, as she says, “to be closer to home”.
“I was living in Australia and I still came home twice a year, which was a long haul. But now I’m closer to my family, I couldn’t imagine not seeing them every six months.”

She is looking forward to using her expertise in consulting Irish businesses.
“I enjoyed being 100% dedicated to my son for a few months but he is starting pre-school soon, and it’s time for me to go back to school myself,” she laughed.

“In the next few months I will be starting to consult with some companies, perhaps working with some Irish companies to help them set up in the States. It’s hard for Irish companies to get into the States, there is a real barrier to entry so I will be helping with sales and marketing strategies and areas like that.”