How one Irish woman made $22bn for Apple in a year
Cathy Kearney, an accountant in the Irish city of Cork, appears to live a fairly modest home life. A graduate of the local university, her home for 15 years has been a dairy farm outside Youghal, a seaside town a short drive from the city.
The 49-year-old lives with her husband and children in a large, but far from grand, farmhouse. Outside work she is involved in the local church. She is also, at first sight, the brains behind much of Apple's exceptional global success in recent times.
Kearney is the Silicon Valley computer giant's top lieutenant in Ireland, and has overseen the explosive success of the company's operations in Cork, responsible for selling iPads, iPhones and MacBooks to scores of markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. No less than $22bn of Apple's profits – two-thirds of the total for the group – came from Kearney's Cork companies in 2011 alone. Back in the United States, Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, has described this international success as unprecedented.
Two years ago Kearney featured in a list of Ireland's 20 most powerful women produced by the Irish Independent. It declared that Apple's success owed much to her "shrewd direction", though it also noted that she was a very private individual and had refused to provide biographical details or a photograph of herself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/29/apple-ireland-cork-cathy-kearney
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