Gavin J Gallagher – extended biography
OK I am guessing you have already read my short bio and are here to go deep.
So what more can I tell you about Gavin J. Gallagher? Well perhaps I should begin with my middle initial.
The J stands for James, after my grandfather on my dad’s side and my great-grandfather on my mother’s side. Interestingly both of them were called James Gallagher. The former was a house-builder, a businessman and a politician from Sligo in the West of Ireland. The later was a policeman and member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, but he too was from the West of Ireland, born in Donegal.
As you can probably gather I take a keen interest in my family history and heritage. One of my hobbies is genealogy, becoming a DNA guinea pig for both 23AndMe.com and Ancestry.com. So far I have managed to piece together my family tree going back to 1770.
So why do I use my middle initial? Easy – do a quick google search for Gavin Gallagher and try to figure out which one I am. At the time of writing there are 47 GG’s on LinkedIn and over 100 GG’s on Facebook. However if you google Gavin J. Gallagher you’ll find me on page 1 every time.
Early Life
I have been involved in real estate and construction my entire life – I grew up literally playing on building sites. My father Seamus (James in the Irish language) followed his father James into the family housebuilding business and I would often tag along on site visits.
As a kid I had the children’s encyclopedia Childcraft (1975 edition). I would spend hours reading it cover to cover and I remember the sense of wonder and amazement whenever I opened up the page about the Empire State Building. That is the earliest memory I have involving any kind of appreciation of architecture.
While I grew up in and around real estate and construction, I was completely fascinated with technology, innovation and gadgets. In junior school I would often spend my lunchtimes in the senior school computer lab where there was a single Apple II computer and dot matrix printer.
In 1983 the move WarGames came out and became obsessed with computers, not long after dad arrived home with a Commodore 64 home computer. I taught myself BASIC and created quiz-like programs with multiple choice questions. I never managed to hack the Pentagon but I still felt pretty knowledgeable about technology.
Another obsession during those early teenage years was video. We had a Sony Video-8 AF camera at home and I would spend hours making hilarious films re-enacting scenes from Star Wars with my brother. As I got older the short films became vlogs covering my day (of course at the time the word ‘vlog’ didn’t exist). I recently rediscovered all my old videos and have started uploading them to a playlist on my YouTube channel.
When I was 15 the family went to America on vacation which of began with a transatlantic flight to New York City. Landing in JFK airport, I remember the palpable excitement as I looked out through the aircraft window and saw the hazy silhouette of the Manhattan skyline in the distance.
We had a terrific 3-week vacation in America, but it was those first 2-3 days in NYC that made the biggest impression on me. Coming from the low-rise city of Dublin, I found the sheer walls of the skyscrapers awe-inspiring and soon became obsessed with identifying each one by name and height.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, this trip effectively charted the course of my life for the next decade. I started making elaborate scale drawings of all the skyscrapers next to Irish landmarks. These drawings became more and more detailed and I started thinking architecture might be a good fit.
Architecture
I write about real estate innovation and topics generally related to optimising the corporate workplace. You might also want check out my YouTube channel (gavinjgallagher) and my new podcast Proptech Innovate for similar content.
I am a property investor-developer and entrepreneur based in Dublin. I have an international track record and career spanning 25 years. Whilst I live and work in Ireland today I did spend 10 year abroad and have bought, sold, built and managed properties all the way from Midtown Manhattan to Downtown Dubai.
Director at Earlsfort Group, I am responsible for our commercial portfolio and business technology and data strategy across our commercial real estate holdings and residential development activities.
My current focus is a comprehensive upgrade and modernisation of East Point, our award-winning business park and home to 50+ medium to large corporate occupiers including Google and Oracle.
An important aspect of my role is to identify suitable PropTech products for implementation across our portfolio. My goal is to enhance our occupiers experience whilst driving profitability for our shareholders.
Achieving this requires balance juggling urgent short-term solutions with deliberate long-term strategic planning that will ensure East Point is best positioned to serve its occupiers and their 8,000+ staff in the years ahead.
As a result of this focus on innovation and demographic trends, I have found myself delving deeper and deeper into the fascinating world of PropTech. I recently came to the uneasy conclusion that technology is going to massively disrupt this sector and I believe landlords and other property professionals should be paying very close attention to it now.
A big picture goal for me is to change the conversation taking place around real estate and introduce a much greater focus on environmental issues and sustainability. Our industry accounts for 40% of GHG emissions and we owe it to our children and grandchildren to bring this down.
I regularly write and speak on this topic, outlining the challenges as I seek to integrate technology across own portfolio and projects. I recently began ‘documenting my journey’ via regular video uploads to YouTube where I share my thoughts and findings resulting from this work.
I write about real estate innovation and topics generally related to optimising the corporate workplace. You might also want check out my YouTube channel PropTechTV and my new podcast Behind The Facade for similar content.
I am a property investor-developer and entrepreneur based in Dublin. I have a track record and career spanning 25 years. Whilst I live and work in Ireland today I spent ten years abroad and have bought, sold, built and managed properties all the way from Midtown Manhattan to Downtown Dubai.
Director at Earlsfort Group, I am responsible for our commercial portfolio and award-winning business park East Point. I pay particular attention to technology trends that may influence our capex plans or our data strategy.
I am currently focussed on ways to improve the user experience of the 8-9,000 staff working for the many corporate & multinational occupiers present in the park – upgrades will include improvements to our infrastructure, and mobility apparatus.
An important aspect of my role is to identify suitable PropTech products for implementation across our portfolio. My goal is to enhance our occupiers experience whilst driving profitability for our shareholders.
Achieving this requires balance juggling urgent short-term solutions with deliberate long-term strategic planning that will ensure East Point is best positioned to serve its occupiers and their 8,000+ staff in the years ahead.
As a result of this focus on innovation and demographic trends, I have found myself delving deeper and deeper into the fascinating world of PropTech. I recently came to the uneasy conclusion that technology is going to massively disrupt this sector and I believe landlords and other property professionals should be paying very close attention to it now.
A big picture goal for me is to change the conversation taking place around real estate and introduce a much greater focus on environmental issues and sustainability. Our industry accounts for 40% of GHG emissions and we owe it to our children and grandchildren to bring this down.
I regularly write and speak on this topic, outlining the challenges as I seek to integrate technology across own portfolio and projects. I recently began ‘documenting my journey’ via regular video uploads to YouTube where I share my thoughts and findings resulting from this work.
My Day Job
As a Director of Earlsfort Group I’ve been involved in the development of commercial real estate and corporate workplace solutions for more than two decades. I am responsible for operations at East Point, a large, award winning office campus developed by Earlsfort back in the 1990’s.
East Point is home to 50+ corporate occupiers ranging from Oracle to Google. On a typical day we could have upwards of 9,000 people working here. I spend a good deal of my time collaborating with occupiers in the design, development and operation of productive work environments that resonate and engage with a younger workforce.
Working with some of the worlds largest occupiers has also inspired me to question some of the conventional wisdom around how our industry goes about its business. I believe an innovative, collaborative approach to how we deliver buildings is a critical in this fast changing, digital world.
I am curious about human behaviours, personal development and leadership. I write, speak and mentor on the topic of mindset and resilience in real estate. I am also fascinated by technology and innovation and how it is transforming the real estate industry.
When I started this blog I was initially focused on PropTech but it has since evolved to cover a broader range of real estate based topics, from mindset and investment behaviour, to innovation to sustainability, to the power of workplace design and its impact on corporate culture.
If you follow my social media profiles you may have noticed the tagline: real estate, investment innovation, impact. I’ve covered both investment and innovation already, so where does impact come in? That all comes down to legacy and my impact on people lives – I hope you’ll find my content useful.