Based in Exeter, UK, Ciara Muldoon holds a BSc in experimental physics from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and a PhD in science studies from the University of Bath. After working as a science-communication consultant, she became an Internet entrepreneur with her husband, Neil Williams, a former aerospace engineer. Their latest project is a charitable search engine that helps tackle climate change and climate injustice.
What skills do you use every day in your job?
Being very organized, decisive, co-operative, creative and mindful are important in my daily life. For over a decade, my husband and I have enjoyed the flexibility of working together from our home in Devon.
As expected, my work–life balance became more focused on family after our daughter was born four years ago. Among other things, I have become more skilled at multi-tasking: moving from role-playing, reading or painting with our daughter, to liaising with our content creators, and discussing website design and marketing strategies with my husband and our PR team. We often work late, so developing some mindfulness skills has helped to prevent burnout.
What do you like best and least about your job?
I have been feeling some eco-anxiety in recent years, as the world burns, floods and heats up. So I like that our latest project, SearchScene.com, has the potential to donate millions of pounds to environmental and humanitarian charities that are working hard to address the causes and effects of climate change.
SearchScene.com is a charitable search engine that we have spent the past few years building, with a small team of amazing people. Like Google, SearchScene makes money from search ads but, unlike Google, it donates 95% of its profits to charities that fight the causes and effects of climate change. Users can choose which of our nominated charities they prefer to support when they search the web. SearchScene also has great privacy features, and beautiful scenery on its homepage that changes regularly, reminding us of the precious things we can still protect if we make some changes, both individually and collectively. I love being part of a project that is making such a positive difference.
What I don’t like is that my job now includes dealing with climate-change deniers online.
What do you know today, that you wish you knew when you were starting out in your career?
Green jobs for physics graduates: opportunities to help build a sustainable future
I wish I had known that I was making a wise choice when I left an academic path that I had followed for many years and dearly loved, to become an Internet entrepreneur with my husband, and then a work-from-home mother. If people are willing to accept uncertainty, and take a leap into the unknown, there are often some wonderful new paths to explore.
