Home is in Lucan, where I live with Penny, my beautiful South African wife, and Danny and April, so the house is always busy!  When I'm not on the school run, picking up lego or refereeing the littles, I currently wear a number of professional hats, having consciously opted into a portfolio career soon after completing my MBA.

• Assistant Professor and Programme Director at UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business, one of the world's top 100 business schools.  I co-created and direct/teach on the MSc in Project Management, as well as on a number of other post-grad programmes up to PhD level.  My profile there is at https://people.ucd.ie/joe.houghton and the MSc in PM website is at https://www.smurfitschool.ie/programmes/masters/mscinprojectmanagement/ 

• Senior Trainer with Trigraph Intelligent Learning - I do some project management and business communication training through Trigraph, and have also created an AI series that we have run several times, both as an open enrolment course and also as one that has been tweaked for specific company needs.

• Chair of the Board at Shine. I’ve been involved in mental health since joining the Samaritans as a volunteer when I was 19 (scary that this is more than 40 years ago now!). Shine is one of Ireland’s leading voices in the movement to destigmatise and advocate for better mental health supports, and I’m proud to help Shine enact its vision as Chair of the current Board.

• Managing Director of Houghton Consulting.  I have a few clients who I have worked with for years who I consult with on various areas of management and risk.  The website is this one - but I'm always interested in new opportunities, so do reach out if I might be able to help you or someone you know!

• Owner - Houghton Photography.  My creative outlet is photography, and as with all my other pursuits, teaching this wonderful and accessible craft is something I just end up doing naturally.  I offer personal 1-1 tuition, longer-term mentoring/development, workshops to businesses wanting to up their own photography game, and talks to camera clubs.  I've also dipped my toe into creating some online video classes around developing photos using Lightroom, and I continue to explore and develop my own skills in this endlessly challenging craft.  My training website is at www.houghtonphoto.com and my Instagram feed is at www.instagram/com/totpics, where I post mainly black-and-white street photos shot with my beautiful little Fuji X series cameras.

The year 2000 and moving to Ireland from the UK was a major change in my life, moving from a career working my way into more senior roles in various multi-national corporations after training as a computer programmer and analyst with the Co-op and Littlewoods in the UK.  I followed that with 4 years working as a self-employed systems developer, before joining Dearborn Chemicals in 1992, who was snapped up by WR Grace, who was in turn bought by BetzDearborn and eventually they were bought by General Electric, where I finished my corporate career as one of their Global Tech Managers. 

But after 15 years of flying somewhere different in the world almost every week, when I moved to Ireland, I did the International Executive MBA in Smurfit to "plug in" to the Irish network, loved it there, and following Charles Handy's lead in his wonderful book "The Empty Raincoat".  I decided to chunk my life and go for a portfolio career where I could have time at home with Penny & the children, as well as work with interesting and challenging people, and with charities such as Pieta House & Shine which are important to me.

I now focus almost exclusively on online education, as this enables me to reach wider audiences and provide a high-level of service to widely distributed audiences