Ruth Mac Partlin, CEO & Founder, Fluid Rock

Ruth Mac Partlin is CEO of one of Ireland' leading Interactive Agencies, Fluid Rock, which she co-founded in 2002. Graduating from Trinity College Dublin in 1989 with a B.Sc. in Marketing Management, it wasn't long before she found herself moving to the United States. Based on the West Coast and working in Silicon Valley, she experienced culture of start-ups and was surrounded by people working on new and exciting ideas.

After a few years back home in Dublin with Motorola Corporation in the mid 1990's, she returned to work for The Dialog Corporation, which at that time had the largest database of information in the world, the result of many years of intelligence gathering by Lockheed Martin. As a marketing manager with the Dialog Corporation, she was involved in marketing the transition from the provision of information on CD-ROM to providing access via internal networks, Intranets, and then directly via the Internet. At the same time she was involved in the online marketing communications of the Dialog Corporation products and started upskilling in the area of web design.

In 1999, she returned to Ireland and made a conscious decision to work in the Interactive arena. She obtained a place on a New Media Project Management Course and went to work directly with a number of the larger Dublin agencies before going it alone in 2002. In 2006 she was appointed to the Board of the Digital Hub, an Irish Government initiative to create an international centre of excellence for knowledge, innovation and creativity focused on digital content and technology enterprises.

Ruth feels privileged to have worked on some of the largest online projects in Ireland over the past eight years. The online environment is constantly evolving and understanding how people access and consume information changes rapidly. Being immersed in online projects on a daily basis for clients in many different industries, provides her with key insight into how to harness online marketing and get the best out of a companies marketing dollars.