“I just felt an overwhelming sense of being home”: Tania Sheikh's Journey from Iraq to Ireland to New York City

From a childhood fascination with New York to a career on Bank of Ireland's trading floor, Tania Sheikh has built a life around ambition, creativity and connecting people. Now, as she considers her next chapter, the community she has helped support is returning the favor.

When Irish Tech Week opened at NASDAQ in New York this week, it marked a milestone for Digital Irish, the organization connecting Irish entrepreneurs and innovators across the Atlantic. For Tania Sheikh, who oversees its New York social media and marketing, it was a moment to reflect on how far the organization had come.

"It's amazing how far we've come from getting coffees and pizza to doing this," she says.

The occasion comes at an uncertain point in Sheikh's own career. She manages Bank of Ireland's NYC Hub, a Manhattan workspace helping Irish businesses establish themselves in America. With the bank preparing to leave the American market, she is contemplating her next move.

For someone accustomed to helping others find their feet in New York, it is an unfamiliar position. Her own journey to the city, however, began somewhere considerably less glamorous: a hospital bed in Ireland.

Sheikh was fourteen, recovering from an appendectomy, when her stepfather brought her a portable DVD player and a collection of "Friends "episodes. She had never visited America, but the show left a lasting impression.

"I just watched it, and I was like, I want that. I want to be there. I was just completely enamored by it."

Seventeen years later, she arrived in New York, aged 31, having left behind a successful career on Bank of Ireland's Dublin trading floor. Among the possessions she was most reluctant to part with was her bicycle.

"I was heartbroken thinking I'd have to get rid of it when I was moving here."

The bank shipped it over, and within months, she was exploring the city on two wheels.

"It was me and my bike against the world," she laughs.

From Iraq to Navan

"I grew up as an Irish kid, which was really nice."

Sheikh was born in Iraq in 1992, into a family with Irish, English, and Middle Eastern roots. Her maternal grandmother was Irish, and her grandfather was Iraqi. In 1998, when she was six, the family moved to Ireland to be closer to relatives on her mother's side.

She remembers little of Iraq beyond the heat and recalls arriving in Ireland feeling "insanely cold for a long time."

She had spoken Arabic as a young child, but her mother was determined that she would settle into Irish life. Sheikh went straight into Irish classes and grew up in Dublin, Swords and later Navan, County Meath.

"I grew up as an Irish kid, which was really nice," she says.

Her mother, a costume cutter and dressmaker whose work has included "Riverdance" and Apple TV productions, was a strong influence. At fourteen, Sheikh spent a summer washing and ironing costumes for "Riverdance", later working in a bridal shop sewing veils and helping with alterations.

"She really raised me to be very strong and independent, even from a very young age."

Choosing finance over art

Sheikh considered art school but ultimately decided against turning a personal passion into a profession.

"Art for me is something that's like self-expression, not necessarily something that I wanted to do as a career."

In 2011, she enrolled at Dublin Institute of Technology to study logistics and supply chain management. Two years later, drawn to the finance modules, she decided to start again in accounting and finance.

Before telling her mother, she investigated the costs, consulted the head of school and worked out how she would manage the change.

"I had all my ducks in a row before I called her," she recalls.

She graduated in 2016, having balanced her studies with roughly six years working at Nando's, where she also developed an interest in social media and marketing. She co-chaired the college's Fashion Society, maintaining her creative interests while focusing academically on economics, financial econometrics and derivatives.

By graduation, she was determined to become a trader.

A place on the desk

In September 2017, Sheikh joined Bank of Ireland's graduate program in corporate banking and global markets. During her first year, she entered an internal innovation competition, Gears48, with a prototype for a banking app.

Although her entry did not reach the final, it caught the attention of Colm Galvin, then head of the bank's US global markets team, who invited her to join another team, Credit Smart.

That team won, introducing her to colleagues in New York.

"From then on I was like, I need to get to New York."

First, she wanted to establish herself on the trading floor. Her final graduate rotation confirmed that ambition.

"I absolutely fell in love with it," she says.

Tania Sheikh at the New York Stock Exchange.

The working day began at 7.30am, and Sheikh relished shadowing experienced traders and learning how the markets worked. She secured a permanent position on the desk in 2019 and was promoted to principal dealer by 2022.

Later that year, however, the bank changed its strategy and closed the markets group, making her position redundant.

An alternative opportunity arose in New York. It was not a trading role, but it offered direct engagement with clients and the Irish-American business community.

She arrived on March 1, 2023, having never previously set foot in America. The passenger beside her on the flight was astonished to discover she was moving to a country she had never visited.

Sheikh felt at home almost immediately.

"Within the first month of wandering the streets by myself and figuring things out, I just felt an overwhelming sense of being home."

Ireland would always be home, she says, but New York offered a different kind of freedom. In a small country, where mutual acquaintances are rarely far away, she had grown accustomed to being known. Here, she discovered the appeal of anonymity.

"You're able to get lost in a sense, or just find yourself."

The first person they meet

Based in Manhattan, Bank of Ireland's NYC Hub provides office and meeting space for Irish businesses entering the American market, connecting companies with investors, professional advisers and the wider Irish-American business community.

Sheikh succeeded Catherine Slattery, whom she credits with developing the Hub, and gradually made the role her own. The bank's relatively small New York operation has given her management experience while allowing her to continue supporting its US finance and global markets teams.

Yet it is the human side of the job she speaks about most enthusiastically.

Sometimes she introduces Irish entrepreneurs to investors. Other times, the help is as simple as recommending a hotel, suggesting somewhere to eat, or offering a familiar place to work.

"Sometimes you're the first person people meet when they arrive in the country," she explains. "It's such a heartwarming job to do."

The role has placed Sheikh at the center of New York's Irish-American professional community, where she has become involved in several organizations.

Digtal Irish Tech Week, October 2026.

Among them is 100 Women in Finance, which supports women in financial services through mentorship, education, and networking. Having joined its Dublin Early Career Committee in 2020, she later became involved in New York and now serves as co-chair of the local committee.

Since 2024, she has helped organize close to fifteen events.

Her commitment is shaped by her experience on the Dublin trading floor, where only four or five of approximately thirty to thirty-five employees were women. She is quick to acknowledge those who paved the way.

"The women who have done all the work before I arrived have really set me up," she says. "We still have a lot of work to do, but I can't say we haven't progressed."

Digital Irish offered another opportunity to combine her professional and creative interests. Having met members through events at the Hub, she volunteered to manage its New York social media and marketing, joining the board in 2024.

For someone who once considered art school, Sheikh has found unexpected opportunities to exercise her creativity in finance, from developing app prototypes to building professional communities.

She also serves on the Ireland Funds Young Leaders Committee.

By her own description, she is a typical Type A personality: ambitious, organized, and rarely without a plan. New York's pace suits her.

"Everybody you meet is really busy and doing a million things. We're all in it together."

She credits Bank of Ireland's US country manager, Tony Dunne, with mentoring her and advocating for her professionally.

"He's both mentored and championed me in rooms where I wasn't," she says.

For Sheikh, good leadership requires humility, recognizing that the best ideas do not necessarily come from the person in charge and giving others room to contribute.

"I've managed to use my creativity in finance or in whatever I'm doing. Everybody has something that they're just uniquely good at, for no reason, that they were just born that way."

Asking for help

Now, the professional network she has spent years building is taking on a new significance.

With Bank of Ireland preparing to leave the American market, Sheikh hopes to find a role in banking or financial services combining her markets experience with the client-facing skills she has developed in New York.

It has placed her on the receiving end of the generosity she has so often extended to others.

"This is probably the first time in my life that I'm now actively asking people for help, and everyone's been great."

One thing, however, is certain: she intends to remain in New York.

"I'm a city girl. I do see myself here long term, so I'm going to do everything I can to do that."

Her family and closest friends remain in Ireland, including her older brother James and her best friend Leah, whom she has known since they were twelve. There are regular family calls and occasional bouts of homesickness.

But in New York, she has found another kind of family.

"In Ireland, we're all Irish," she says.

Here, where the community is smaller, solidarity takes on a different significance.

"If you hear about someone landing, all of us go out of our way to have a coffee, to meet them, to do whatever we can."

It is a generosity she has experienced herself and one she now extends to others.

Her advice to Irish people considering the move is to think about the person they want to become and what they want others to associate with them.

In her own case, she has built a professional identity around finance, technology, startups and helping Irish businesses establish themselves in America.

Yet she knows that identity will continue to evolve.

"We're constantly changing and evolving," she says. "Who the hell knows who they are?"

For Sheikh, whose journey has taken her from Iraq to Ireland and eventually to a city she once knew only through a television screen, that uncertainty is not something to fear.

"You're not going to find it. You're going to create it."