Meet The EMBA Class Of Entrepreneurs: Executives Today, Founders Tomorrow 

Ailbhe Keane
Trinity Business School 

Venture name: Izzy Wheels
Date of founding: 2017
Program: Trinity Executive MBA  

Tell us about your career background: My background is in Visual Communications and Graphic Design. I studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, where Izzy Wheels began as my final-year project. I launched the business the week after graduating and went straight from design school into entrepreneurship. 

Without a formal business background, I learned almost everything through hands-on experience. I was simultaneously a designer, marketer, salesperson, customer service representative, and business owner. As Izzy Wheels grew, my role evolved from designer and founder to leading the creative and commercial direction of an international brand. 

What is your business/venture? Izzy Wheels is an award-winning Irish brand that creates colourful, removable wheel covers for wheelchairs. I founded the business with my younger sister Izzy, who was born with spina bifida and has used a wheelchair all her life. 

Our mission is to transform wheelchairs from purely medical devices into expressions of personality and style. Since launching in 2016, we have sold our products in more than 60 countries, collaborated with over 100 artists and partnered with global brands including Disney, Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, Barbie and Hello Kitty. 

Our motto is: “If you can’t stand up, stand out!” 

What inspired you to found this business? Growing up, I saw how people often noticed Izzy’s wheelchair before they noticed her. The clinical appearance of the chair didn’t reflect her bright, colourful personality at all. 

As children, we would decorate her wheelchair for special occasions, and Izzy always viewed her wheels as an extension of her style. When I was completing my final-year design project, I created a range of colourful wheel covers that allowed my sister to express her personality. 

I shared the first designs on Instagram, and the response was immediate. We began receiving messages from wheelchair users and families around the world asking where they could buy them. That was when we realised this was much more than a college project. 

Why did you enrol on the EMBA? Izzy Wheels grew very quickly, and I found myself leading a global business with a background in design but no formal business education. I had developed strong creative instincts and learned an enormous amount about business through experience, but I wanted a deeper understanding of strategy, finance, leadership and how to scale a company sustainably. 

The Executive MBA appealed to me because I could continue running Izzy Wheels while immediately applying what I was learning to the business. I chose Trinity because of its reputation, its international outlook and the strength of its business community. 

How has the EMBA helped you/your business? The EMBA helped me move from thinking primarily as a creative founder to thinking more strategically as a CEO. It gave me a stronger understanding of finance, operations, negotiation, leadership, and long-term planning. 

One of its greatest benefits was having the space to step back from the daily demands of the business and examine it more objectively. Entrepreneurs can become so absorbed in keeping everything moving that they rarely have time to question whether they are moving in the right direction. 

It also gave me greater confidence when negotiating with large international companies and making decisions about partnerships, pricing and growth. I was able to bring real challenges from Izzy Wheels into the classroom and apply what I learned directly to the business. 

What’s the one thing about the EMBA that you think is undervalued? I didn’t anticipate how much I would learn from my classmates. You naturally expect to learn from the lecturers and course material, but the experience and perspectives within the peer network were equally valuable. 

My classmates came from very different industries and professional backgrounds, so they approached challenges in ways I never would have considered. As an entrepreneur, it can be easy to become isolated within your own business. Having a trusted group of experienced people to exchange ideas with was incredibly valuable and continues to be long after the programme. 

What’s next for your business? The next stage for Izzy Wheels is about growing our impact through larger strategic partnerships. We want to make expressive, beautifully designed wheelchair products more widely available by working with leading wheelchair manufacturers and global brands. 

We will continue expanding our collections and artist collaborations while exploring new ways to integrate personalisation and inclusive design into the wheelchair industry. Our ambition is for wheelchair users to be offered products that reflect their identities and tastes as standard, rather than personalisation being treated as an afterthought. 

Would you recommend the EMBA to other entrepreneurs? If yes, why? Absolutely. Entrepreneurship teaches you an enormous amount, but learning solely through trial and error can be costly. The EMBA gives you frameworks to understand what you may already be doing instinctively, while also exposing the gaps in your knowledge. 

It is a significant commitment, particularly while running a business, but that is also what makes it so valuable. You can apply the learning immediately to real decisions, challenges and opportunities. For me, it provided the knowledge, perspective and confidence to lead Izzy Wheels into its next stage of growth. 

 NEXT PAGE: Alice Liu, NUS Business School 

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