Colm is a native of Belfast and after graduating with a Master of Engineering degree from the Queen’s University of Belfast, he went to work in Japan on the shop floor for an electronics manufacturing company. After two years in Japan, with a period based in Thailand, he was asked to transfer to the United States and lived in Santa Clara, the Silicon Valley area of California for three years.
Upon returning to Ireland, he worked in manufacturing and telecommunications roles before moving to Waterford to take a up a position in AOL, the UK internet service provider.
When faced with redundancy in 2010, Colm became an accidental entrepreneur. He founded, with two partners, a business that was the “fastest growing start up in the history of Enterprise Ireland” according to the then CEO of Enterprise Ireland. The new startup was born out of the mass redundancy of 700 people in Waterford and that shaped its mission in terms of its strategy. It adopted a socio-economic diversity growth plan by choosing locations where youth unemployment was higher than the national average. The company successfully grew to employ 1700 full time and part time employees by 2016 with annual revenues of €45 million. In 2020 he sold the business to the global service provider, Infosys.