Andrew Hetherington is the chief executive of Business to Arts, a charitable organisation that aims to bring sponsorship to the Irish arts scene through companies like Accenture and Bank of Ireland. Founder of fundit.ie and husband to the alter ego of one of Ireland’s favourite drag queens, Shirley Temple Bar, he says that companies have realised LGBT+ is part of their make-up. Photo by Babs Daly.

One of my first bosses when I started my career off in banking was an incredible lesbian woman. She was probably the most important influence on my own thinking about myself, and made me think that I could achieve many things, regardless of what people thought about my private life. She was the catalyst that said, ‘You should be doing something more compelling and fun that you’re more interested in’.

Originally I either wanted to be a social worker or somebody that worked on something that made a difference to other people. But I happened to find myself in banking and I did pretty well. Then, in relatively quick succession, both my father and my grandfather died. Both men would have been a big influence on me in terms of career focus, which made me kind of pause and think maybe now’s the time just to go in a different direction. So, I went back to college and did an MA in Cultural Policy and Arts Management.