Forty Under 40: Niki DePhilips

Senior VP of Store Development and Interim VP of HR, Kum & Go LC

Fun FactGrowing up, DePhillips collected and sold baseball cards. She was born in Washington, D.C., and she and her husband, Joe, share the same birthday.

Twelve years ago, when a friend told her about a job opening at Kum & Go LC, Niki DePhillips saw an opportunity.

That job was administrative assistant. Now, DePhillips is the youngest female executive in the convenience store chain’s history and one of the few in the industry. With a degree in marketing and her eye on retail management, commercial real estate wasn’t on DePhillips’ radar at first.

“I was never exposed to real estate,” DePhillips said. “In college, I had my mom review my apartment leases before ICloud-based provider of customer service Zendesk is to create 300 jobs in Dublin over the next three to four years.

The roles will be in a number of areas including engineering, developing, sales, legal, and finance.

The move will bring its total headcount in Dublin to in excess of 500 employees.

Founded in a Copenhagen loft by three friends, Zendesk initially had just two members of staff in its Dublin office.

Read more: Turbine technology set to create 50 jobs from river flow

Speaking on Newstalk this morning, Colum Twomey, vice president of product engineering at Zendesk and the company’s first hire in Ireland, said that a challenge for the company is always finding the appropriate skills to fill the roles, however he said that the company had been very successful at finding