Karen Holland
Co-Founder, Brickfield Education Labs
What is the background to your company?
We (Karen Holland and Gavin Henrick) set up Brickfield Education Labs in Ireland in mid-2019 to support organisations making their training and online learning courses more inclusive.
As co-founders we bring together blended backgrounds of business process, consulting, product and software development in both the corporate and academic sectors to create a vision to make learning accessible to all. I have worked on development projects with Moodle for several years, after a background in Enterprise Development and interface design.
Gavin has a track record working with Moodle service providers in Europe and North Amercia, and left his role as Business Development Manager for Moodle to set up Brickfield.
Can you tell us a bit more about what Brickfield Education Labs do?
Brickfield Education Labs improve the quality of online education by finding, fixing, and futureproofing content accessibility within Moodle. Our belief is that accessible, usable digital course materials make for a more inclusive and effective teaching and learning platform.
Brickfield provides an integrated Moodle Toolkit of products and services for the Moodle Learning Management System, or LMS to enable a more accessible and inclusive learning delivery by institutions, helping them manage content accessibility and usability of their course materials.
Throughout the Moodle Accessibility Toolkit, Brickfield provides teacher guides, supports, help and instructions to assist staff in building their understanding of accessibility and what they should do to improve their content.
We are currently a team of 10 people serving the education and training sectors.
And what type of markets do you currently work in?
Brickfield works closely with clients in Ireland, such as DCU and Solas, however most of Brickfields clients are based overseas in Europe; France, UK, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Poland, and North America – Canada and USA, and recently Australia.
“We like that Waterford is a liveable city without a car. We can get to most places in a short space of time by using public transport or walking. There are nice restaurants and hotels and good cultural activities in the city.”
How did your move to the South East come about?
Although we were based in Dublin at the time, we took part in the NDRC accelerator at Arclabs, Waterford during 2019. This was our first introduction to the tech community in the South East. We met people involved in the companies based at Arclabs, we started to make links to the university and we were introduced to Aisling who is the centre manager there.
Then at the start of 2023, my husband and business partner Gavin and I were looking at purchasing a house, and the value for money in Waterford caught our eye. We were able to secure a house with a garden that wouldn’t have been possible for the same outlay in Dublin city.
What are the benefits of living in Ireland South East?
There are the quality of life benefits and also the benefits for our business. Neither myself or Gavin want to drive so we like that Waterford is a liveable city without a car. We can get to most places in a short space of time by using public transport or walking. There are nice restaurants and nice hotels for our friends to stay in when they visit. We really enjoy the range of shops at the Ardkeen campus. There are good cultural activities in the city and we like nothing more than to escape out to a gig in the Haven Hotel in Dunmore East, it’s a beautiful setting out there for a live event.
On the business side we have gained huge benefits from our relationship with SETU which developed during our time at NDRC. We have utilised their work placement system to develop internships in our business and have had many staff who stay on or come back after their internship is complete. We like to invest time in our interns and make sure that they receive a rounded training programme from us that will enable them to keep working with us or to find work elsewhere.
Can you share with us some recent highlights for the company?
In Late 2023, Brickfield Education Labs was shortlisted for Irish Exporters Association Industry Awards – for the category “High Potential Exporter Award”. This year Brickfield Education Labs featured in Spark Crowdfunding’s “Top 100 Most Ambitious Companies in Ireland 2024”.
And what’s next for Brickfield Education Labs?
We are looking at a round of investment in the next six months as we are planning an expansion into the US market. We would like to open an office there and build out a team. In the second quarter of 2024, we will be promoting our second product offering – a Teaching and Learning Toolkit, that includes a suite of tools to support organisations delivering competency and credential-based training and learning. During the second half of the year, we will be collaborating with a number of organisations on developing some AI supports for students.
Our People
“If I could sum up the South East in one word, ‘opportunities’ is the most ideal.”
Daniel Martins
“The South East is a great place to build a business from.”
Jim Hughes, Innovate
“A taste of city life with the benefits of rural living.”
Joy Redmond, Sonru