If there’s one thing at the top of Vivienne Sayers O’Callaghan’s impressive to-do list, it’s rewriting the narrative. “They’d always ask me about the Famine, potatoes, England, drinking and fighting,” the 24-year-old County Cork native said about her time studying in Boston in 2022. “That never reflected the view of the Ireland I grew up in.”
Whether it’s reclaiming stereotypes, revitalizing the Irish language, or even redirecting her own destiny, Sayers O’Callaghan knew that New York City was the place to be. “I saw the ambition that the people of New York had,” she said. “Even what I saw on television, I saw what these people were capable of, I saw this entrepreneurial mindset and I said, “That is the place for me.” Call it intuition, but in Sayers O’Callaghan’s case, she had a mentor who planted the seed in her New York state of mind. With a long-time love for music and having studied it in college, Sayers O’Callaghan’s voice teacher saw the hustle and bustle in her eyes before even she did. “We’d be singing through our opera arias and he said to me during my first or second lesson, ‘You need to be in America.’ I never understood what he meant until I moved here.”
Following the move to the U.S. came a hunger for Irish representation within the multicultural pinball machine that is New York City. “I can’t find Barry’s tea, I can’t find this, does anyone know where I can go and speak Irish?” These were all thoughts that bobbled through Sayers O’Callaghan’s head navigating the busy boroughs of the Big Apple, where the warm smiles of passing pedestrians back home were replaced by blank faces and high-speed city bikes. It was then an interest in social media content was born. “I started making silly little content about the different cultural idiosyncrasies between the two places,” she said. “I was really jarred by the narrative that I was hearing that Irish Americans and people outside of the Irish diaspora had about Ireland.”
Now, having generated over 100 million views on her videos across platforms, Sayers O’Callaghan has firmly found her niche, and it’s her background in business that she partially credits to her success. “My corporate experience fed into the kind of confidence I had to gain to put my face on a screen and feel comfortable enough expressing my experiences.” Sayers O’Callaghan made the jump to New York with the Mountbatten Program, which placed her in a financial firm in the World Trade Center. “I wanted to learn how to communicate and present like an American,” she said. “It was the funniest, most ignorant statement in the world but I wanted to gain the confidence that I saw in New York City.”
When a TikTok video discussing Irish baby names garnered over 12 million views, Sayers O’Callaghan saw the impact of her creativity. “What’s amazing is that there is 70 million Irish diaspora throughout the world and 40 million of them are in the United States alone.” Within the Irish diaspora, she noticed an influx of her viewers showing appreciation for Irish representation across the pond, her patriotism even spurring her viewers to name their children Irish names. Her younger audiences most notably have shifted their opinion of the Irish language as an aural relic. ““I thought that Irish wasn’t cool anymore, but now we’re seeing it on TikTok,” she said of their reactions. Beyond the Irish diaspora, Sayers O’Callaghan has opened up a conversation on the consonance across cultures. “I got a message today saying how one woman is doing research on the parallels in the Irish language and the Turkish language,” she said. “I’m posting a video soon about the Irish language words that are in the English Oxford dictionary. It targets such a wide audience and that’s what I specialize in, creating super accessible content that way.”
Sayers O’Callaghan admits that she herself didn’t always see the merit of learning Irish. “I did my Leaving Cert in 2018 and I still came out of secondary school thinking that Irish was the uncoolest thing ever,” she said. “I’m really embarrassed to say that but we weren’t taught to have a grá for the language whereas now that’s what I’m trying to do with the online content.” While her content has not only helped both her younger viewers and herself to reconnect with Gaeilge, Sayers O’Callaghan is not one to dismiss the problems.
“The overall housing crisis in Ireland, the Gaeltacht housing in particular, is a massive threat to the Irish language because the native speakers can’t afford to live there,” she said. “‘Beatha teanga í a labhairt’ means ‘the life of a language is to speak it’ and if I’m here speaking to you in English then the language isn’t living. It’s the speakers that are the life of that language at the end of the day.”
Sayers O’Callaghan’s devotion to spreading the word about the Irish people and their culture goes beyond her videos. Her love for music is connecting her to her roots while she’s away from home. Thanks to a marketing executive position at MCC Marketing, Sayers O’Callaghan has worked with a multitude of Irish artists in New York City. “We’re working on Limerick band Hermitage Greens’ new tour around the U.S., we worked on the Two Johnnies, we worked on promoting the Saw Doctors,” she said. “Now I see these doors opening for me here, so I’m very fortunate to have gone back to music.”
The Cork native also credits her musical side as her biggest motivation towards reaching for success. “If I’m ever sitting in the middle of Carnegie Hall or the Lincoln Center or the Met Opera, it’s like the very first day I arrived in New York City. I have a newfound love, respect, inspiration. It’s like a rejuvenation.”
In a city that runs at the speed of a bullet train, Sayers O’Callaghan knows the necessity in finding your corners to stay grounded. “It sounds cliched but I love to go to a trad session. If I have to be dragged out of a mood hole, let’s call it, I’ll have to go to a concert or go to an Irish pub and have a shepherd’s pie and just feel it for a day or for a week.”
Now, with her social media savviness stitched into her back pocket, Sayers O’Callaghan is ready to share the digitalized gospel with her own new business. “I’m forming my own social media management agency. It’s called Sayers Socials & Consulting and we’ll specialize in full-service social media management for businesses and individuals who want a good, premium digital presence without the pressure,” she said. “I’m going to form an agency that takes social media off your plate so you can focus on what you do best, which is growing your business or your brand. All my clients are Irish companies that are expanding into or are already in the U.S. market so that’s a really nice tie to home.”
While it’s not always easy to find comfort in New York City, Sayers O’Callaghan has the courage to keep going. “Being on social media is vulnerable, it can be jarring when you do get negative feedback.” But for every online troll and scowling pedestrian, there’s a native New Yorker getting Irish prose tattooed onto his arm and a stream of J1ers falling back in love with Gaeilge. Sayers O’Callaghan understands the highs and lows of her New York journey, and sums it all up in one simple sentence. “If I have the worst day ever then I’m going to have the best day ever sometime soon.”
