MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1987.

Next Thursday one of four Irishwomen could be chosen as Cosmopolitan magazine's Woman of Tomorrow at a glittering occasion in London. Kathy Sheridan spoke to them.

WOMAN OF TOMORROW

NEXT THURSDAY, 200 young women will turn up at the Hyde park Hotel, London, for a celebratory champagne breakfast courtesy of Cosmopolitan magazine. All of these women were chosen by a high-powered judging panel as young achievers, who have what it takes to make it to the top of their chosen field. In other words, they are the Women of Tomorrow. Among the 200 are four Irish Girls - a Shop Steward and a Travel Agent, both from Lisburn, Co. Antrim, an Assistant Art Director from Dublin and an Account Executive from Co. Mayo.

At the breakfast, the 10 category winners will be announced as well as the overall Woman of tomorrow. All will receive Certificates commemorating their success and awaiting the overall winner is a Lalique statue entitled "masque de Femme", worth around £3,000.

Micheline Egan, from Co. Mayo, is a finalist in the Communications Category, which is a touch ironic as we were unable to track her down to talk to her about her nomination. She has spent this past summer working as a housekeeper in New York and doing other odd cleaning jobs "on the side" and when last heard of was methodically stowing away the proceeds with her sights on a two-year trek through South America and Asia. She has always had a lot of "zip", according to her family. straight from school to work as Tipperary town correspondent for the Nationalist. While in Tipperary, she also ran her own public relations company for a time and moved on to act as press and media consultant for the Environment Awareness Bureau. She then headed for London where after only four weeks, she was signed by McCann Consultancy, a public relations company. She evidently made quite an impression there because it was a colleague in the firm who nominated her as a Woman of Tomorrow.

When she tires of touring the world, she is expected to resume her career in public relations.Then again, she may try something completely different …….

IRISH TIMES - 1985

Micheline Egan is not yet 21, yet she is the Clonmel Nationalist's resident reporter in Tipperary Town. She does freelance radio broadcasting for RTE, she drives her own car, owns her own house and is busily mapping out plans for the further development of her career. She is the classic example of how a young school leaver can make the system work for herself and effectively create her own job.

Micheline is from Castlebar, Co Mayo, where she did her Leaving Certificate in the Convent of Mercy only three years ago. She decided she wanted to be a journalist and realising that she would have to present a portfolio of writings, she set to and wrote 25 articles between the Easter holiday and her Leaving Certificate examination in June 1982. "I just looked around for things that were happening locally and wrote about them. I visited a health farm for one article, did another on a youth project in the town, things like that.

After the Leaving, she used a birthday present of £40 to hitch around Ireland for six days. "I got a list of provincial papers and called on every one I could find". She went to the Cork Examiner. "I called at night when they were producing the paper and they were so amazed that a student from Co Mayo came all the way to see them that they ended up publishing two of my articles". Several provincial papers agreed to publish more. By the time she came back, she had six published.

She then went about the business of badgering provincial newspaper editors once again. She actually offered to work free to get a foot in the door. She finally persuaded the Nenagh Tribune to take her on a work-experience basis and then got the National Manpower Service to approve the placement and pay her £30 a week. When after four months she didn't feel she was getting what she needed, she persuaded the Clonmel Nationalist to take her over for the rest of the work experience period.

"There is nothing difficult about any of this", she laughs. "its just a matter of sussing out what you see and know you can do yourself and then persuading them to let you try." When the work experience period was over, the Nationalist were going to let her go, but the NMS people told her about the Employment Incentive Scheme, whereby a company which creates a new job and takes on an unemployed person gets a subsidy of £30 from the NMS towards the salary. She took a hard look at the Nationalist. Then she went to the editor with her ideas of the features and news which she felt she could do which would be new and asked him to keep her on as an employment incentive staff addition.

He was "very helpful and supportive" and she worked happily with the Nationalist for a year. At the end she was to be let go again. She looked around; they had no resident reporter in Tipperary town. Back to the editor with another proposal: send me to Tipperary town and I'll be your resident reporter and file local stories and features from the town each week. You can pay me on a contract basis.

So there she is in Tipperary and she loves it. "Life in a provincial town is great. There is so much happening, so much to do and to report". RTE came across her and asked her to do some regular radio slots which she is now doing too and she has so many offers of freelance work that she turns them down.

She doesn't think there is anything unusual about what she has done. "Too many young people sit there and complain that there are no jobs. But you can make the system work for you, you can create your own jobs." She reckons she sees dozens of opportunities in provincial towns for other young people so do what she has done. Too many people think it's the end of the world if they don't get into college, she says. She's full of plans for the future, is doing a part-time course on how to set up your own business and if she's not a tycoon by 30 I'll eat my hat.

Christina Murphy
Education Editor