Alannah Hargan

Following the success of Dame Street Dental, I was promoted to Regional Manager to support the expansion and operations of Truly Dental—now the largest dental group in Ireland. I oversaw the launch and development of eight new clinics across Ireland, as well as new locations in Dubai and London. I also led the relocation and rebranding of Dame Street Dental into Ireland’s first private Dental Hospital, now operating with 32 surgeries—the largest in the country.

In this role, I had full operational responsibility across new clinic setup, construction and design input, recruitment, and clinic management. I created and implemented company-wide policies and SOPs, led staff training, and managed HR tasks including hiring, performance management, and dismissals. I was also responsible for reporting weekly KPIs, attending sales and marketing strategy sessions, and working closely with the finance team.

A key part of my role involved leading the rollout and optimization of our practice management software systems, including Exact and Dentally (Software of Excellence), to ensure streamlined workflows and improved clinic performance.

As a senior management team member and shareholder, I contributed to high-level strategy, troubleshooting operational issues, and scaling business systems to support rapid growth. I managed a team of Practice Managers across multiple clinics, holding weekly leadership meetings and regular 1:1s to support performance and growth.

My leadership approach is grounded in people-first management and deep operational knowledge. Having started at the front desk, I understand the full patient journey, which allows me to lead with empathy, precision, and a strong focus on both staff satisfaction and patient care.

I am currently still working remotely for Truly Dental doing admin and HR tasks until I settle into a new role in Australia.

From the beginning of my role at Dame Street Dental, I progressed rapidly from Front of House to Supervisor, then to Practice Manager.

I oversaw day-to-day operations, ensuring the clinic ran efficiently and smoothly for both staff and patients.

Managed scheduling, front desk operations, and cross-team coordination to optimize patient flow and service delivery.

When I joined Dame Street, the clinic was operating as a three chair surgery, it was renovated to a nine chair surgery. I was involved in overseeing the construction of the project. I played a key role in improving internal systems, patient communication, and operational workflows, recruitment, onboarding, and staff training to maintain high standards of care and professionalism.

When I joined Dame Street, the team consisted of twenty employees, when I moved onto my next role the team had reached one hundred employees.

I worked as a receptionist at The Wilder Townhouse, a boutique hotel in the centre of Dublin. The role required strong organizational skills, the ability to multitask under pressure, and a commitment to delivering outstanding customer service.

I was responsible for managing phone and email inquiries, processing bookings, checking guests in and out, handling payments, and balancing the till at the end of each shift. I consistently maintained a calm and efficient approach during busy periods and took pride in ensuring a positive guest experience.

My dedication to service was reflected in numerous positive reviews on TripAdvisor and The Wilder’s website.

I began work for Overseas Imports an English supermarket chain based in Spain. I worked in the flagship store in Mijas Costa. To start I was mainly on the checkouts and working in the cash and admin office once a week. Within three months I was permanently based in the admin office. I loved working in this environment as it was very fast-paced. I worked in a close team of three.

My role in admin was to deal with queries both from businesses and customers, to complete and issue invoices from both Spain and England and to answer the phones. As well as the admin work, in the morning and evenings, I was in charge of balancing the safe and either putting out the tills or cashing up the tills. Alongside this, I was responsible for managing a team of cashiers, this involved allocating breaks, dealing with staff and customer complaints and arranging rotas.

• I moved to the Costa del Sol Spain after living and working in England for four years. I took a job in a call centre called Antiss. This was an English call centre. My role was to receive inbound calls and perform a survey for data collection.
• This was totally out of my comfort zone but I learned a huge amount working here. It helped to improve my admin and phone skills, whilst also having performance targets to achieve daily. I left this role after six months as I received a more suitable job offer.

I began work at Boots as a customer assistant; very quickly I was promoted to work for their beauty brand No7.

I underwent their training plan in Kings Road, Chelsea for three months. Part of the course was training in high-level customer service and sales techniques, which I really took to and am still passionate about.

Whilst I worked for No7 Guildford, our account became very successful. My greatest achievement of working for No7 was when my team and I became a million-pound account. I enjoyed this process because we were forced to create a strict sales and service plan over a six month period, after a lot of hard work and dedication we managed to not just achieve our targets but also exceeded our regional targets.

I left No7 and Boots with a heavy heart as I really loved my job but decided I want to pursue a life abroad in Spain. I have maintained a strong relationship with everyone in my team still to this day.