Maura Winston is Chief People Officer of Cairn Homes, Ireland’s leading homebuilder. The company is listed on Euronext Dublin and is a constituent member of the ISEQ 20 with a market capitalisation in March 2025 of €1.21 billion.
How did you come to be in your current role? What was your journey to it?
I consider myself incredibly lucky to have spent the last six years in Cairn. It was a lot about being in the right place at the right time. At the time I was approached, I was still in my Director of Court Transformation role with the Federal Court and had been ‘commuting’ to Australia for four years. My project was coming to an end, and I was approached to take on an organisation development role to support Cairn in its scaling journey. Previous roles were based on my organisation development skillset and aligning the people strategy to business strategy to drive overall company performance. Starting out in Accenture, I honed my toolkit in change management and organisation development, and from there worked in many in-house and consulting roles.
What do you love about your role? What aspects of it do you find inspiring?
I love that I am part of an exceptional leadership team, with whom I am pushing an open door when it comes to the People Agenda. I have an excellent people team, and we are fully integrated into the commercial pulse of the business. My role is to support the implementation of our CEO’s vision, so I get to work with all aspects of the business, driving organisational effectiveness, building employee engagement and employer brand, and seeing the results of these efforts in our company and staff performance. Being so close to the action and being part of delivering much-needed homes is truly inspiring.
What has been the biggest challenge to date?
When working in Australia, I supported the Chief Justice in the delivery of electronic courts and records. I would usually say that stakeholder management is one of my strongest skills, but trying to get the necessary buy-in from 40 judges, all running effectively different businesses, to move from heavily traditional processes and hard-copy materials proved much harder than I thought!
Are you confident about your retirement? Do you feel like you have got enough squared away?
I’ve done a lot to get on top of this in the last ten years, but I can say that prior to that I was very focused on the here and now – especially living in Australia and prioritising getting home as often as possible with the kids. We were lucky to get on the property ladder early, which is definitely harder today, but this stood to us, and paying down debt was a priority. In recent years, utilising the available tax breaks to focus on my pension has been a key focus, and I have received very good advice from our company pension advisors.
Do you follow the stock market, or have you got any plans to invest?
I do follow the stock exchange, particularly in my current role. As a leadership team member in a PLC I am in the fortunate position to be involved in our equity scheme, and that has resulted in a strong investment portfolio. Over the next few years, I plan to diversify and have reached out for investment advice from a third party.
What’s the best money advice you have ever received?
I’m a big fan of The Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape. It’s a great system. After the monthly commitments are taken into account, you use the remaining amount to fill three buckets: Splurge/Fire Extinguisher/Save – at different stages in life you can prioritise certain buckets, but it means you can have a bit of fun now – while putting something towards the future!