Elaine Aylward works as a research assistant for the FEIW project having completed her BA in Marketing at Waterford Institute of Technology in 2005. She comes from an entrepreneurial background and became interested in the area of entrepreneurship when she worked in a company that was owned and run by a male entrepreneur.

Her research interest is in discovering why the majority of female entrepreneurs enter traditional service industry sectors and why such a small number of women enter high-tech, high-growth orientated sectors.

The project therefore was of huge interest to Elaine as she felt that as well as conducting an exploratory study, she would like to do something to help promote and increase the level of female entrepreneurship in the South East.