By Business & Finance 
Kieran Duff and Ruth Curran, MERC Partners pictured with Business Person of the Month for June 2014, Sonia Flynn, managing director of Facebook Ireland and Ian Hyland, Business & Finance.
Sonia Flynn and the team at Facebook continue to drive growth and expansion for the social network through the EMEA headquarters in Dublin’s Docklands.
Sonia Flynn joined Facebook as EMEA director for Community Operations in EMEA in November 2009 an in 2011 was appointed as Facebook Ireland’s head of office.
Flynn has strong international management experience with multinational technology companies including Google, where she was on the team that established Google’s EMEA headquarters in Dublin.
Previously, she worked at supply chain manufacturing firm – ModusLink and also at Taxback.com – a multinational corporation providing specialist tax return services to private and corporate clients across 100 countries.
Social network
First established in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, social networking giant Facebook has become one of the world’s most recognised brands in just 10 years. As of March 31st 2014, Facebook had 1.28 billion monthly active users and reported revenue for 2013 of over $7.87bn.
Facebook established its EMEA headquarters – its largest office outside of the company’s global headquarters in California – in Dublin in 2009 and has contributed €165.7m to the Irish economy and supported over 2,000 direct and indirect jobs in Ireland.
Expansion
In February 2013, Facebook announced its move to a new office in Grand Canal Square, Dublin, with capacity for 1,000 employees. Facebook’s presence and growth in Ireland is a sign of the deep pool of available talent.
Commitment to Ireland
A resounding endorsement in light of the success and growth of Facebook’s operations in Ireland came from Barry O’Leary, CEO of IDA Ireland, who said: “Facebook is one of the highest profile companies in Ireland today.
“Facebook’s presence here since 2009 has been a huge draw for other firms when IDA Ireland is bringing interested clients to Ireland.Its new office space will solidify Ireland as the international headquarters of Facebook and allow the company to further expand its operations here from its current base of server support, policy, safety and database engineering.”
Facebook’s office in Dublin is the company’s largest operation outside of the Group HQ in Menlo Park, CA.
CV highlights
- Flynn is managing director of Facebook Ireland. She joined Facebook as director for Community Operations in EMEA in November 2009.
- Flynn previously worked with Google as it established its EMEA headquarters in Dublin.
- Prior to joining Google, Flynn worked at ModusLink – a supply chain manufacturing firm – and Taxback.com – the tax return specialists.
- Flynn is a graduate of University of Ulster at Coleraine in Applied Languages and holds an MA in German Studies from Queen’s University Belfast.
Business & Finance, Business Person of the Month
Business & Finance, in association with MERC Partners, has been rewarding excellence in business through the ‘Business Person of the Month’ award over the last number of years. These awards seek to recognise noteworthy achievements in business leadership, and particularly those that make a telling contribution to the wider business community in Ireland.
