Two people built this.
Aimee Conroy has spent twenty-five years behind the chair and has trained hairdressers since she qualified at twenty. Inge Mulligan spent twenty years keeping large, expensive projects on schedule and inside budget. One Educates. One Elevates and they both seek to Inspire.
Aimee Conroy.
Twenty-five years in, and still a student of the craft.
She qualified at twenty, young then and almost unheard of now. Since then she has worked in some of the best-known salons in Kilkenny and beyond, competed in the L’Oréal Colour Trophy, and was recognised at the Image Awards in 2015.
Inge Mulligan.
The business behind the craft.
Inge spent twenty years in construction, fourteen with an international engineering company building power infrastructure across several countries. Her job was the money. At one point she managed the financial performance of more than twenty-five projects at once, in a division turning over around forty million dollars a year. One was a ninety million dollar build, delivered inside budget and on deadline.
She moved to Ireland, became a shareholder and director of a passive fire protection company, and sold her stake at the end of 2025 to start this one.
Inge leads the planning, governance, finances and growth of the Academy. When you commit eighteen months and a lot of money to a school in its first year, there is someone here whose entire career has been keeping complicated, expensive things on track.
“Back in the day, there were no certificates”
Anyone who trained more than a decade ago has little paperwork to show for it. Accreditation arrived in this industry recently, and the certificates that did exist weren’t treated as important.
Her view on what matters: “Hairdressing is mostly practical. It’s 90 percent practical. If you’re not good with your hands, you’re not going to be a good hairdresser.”
Twenty-five years of work is the qualification. This course is the paperwork the next generation will have, built on eighteen months of doing the work on real clients.
20
hairdressers trained after hours
Six in the evening until eleven at night.
In the salons where Aimee worked, training the juniors happened after hours. The top stylists didn’t want to do it: start at six, finish near eleven, and you were lucky to be paid.
She took it on. “I was the only one that did it because I was so enthusiastic and wanted to do it.”
Around twenty people learned from her that way, squeezed into the end of long days. She has forgotten faces but she remembers the feeling of fulfilment of teaching and wanting to do it.
“Nobody is beneath anybody. Everybody should be able to sweep the floor. Everybody should be helping each other. We’re trying to raise each other up, not tear each other down.”
When she came up, stylists were untouchable and juniors were staff to be used. Her frustration is still with the logic of it: “What they didn’t realise is these girls were them years ago.”
There are no juniors here. Everyone sweeps the floor, Aimee and Inge included.
You can’t put a hairdresser in a uniform.
Asked about the dress code, her answer was that hairdressers are creative people, and you can’t hand a creative person a uniform. Mostly black, because colour doesn’t show on it. Past that it’s up to you. Tattoos, whatever you like.
“We’re the creative ones,” she says.
The academy she wishes she’d had.
Aimee is a hairdresser first and says so cheerfully. Writing this course has been the most fulfilling work she’s done. She did it because the old apprenticeship model held people through years they didn’t need and lost good hairdressers along the way.
Asked what she wants graduates to feel on their last day, she couldn’t get through the answer. “I’d be bawling. It’s a huge, huge achievement. They should be super proud of themselves.”
“I wish this was around when I was doing it.”