Irish in LA: ‘Irish people are really good at calling out bull in US corporate life, there’s a ton of it’

Micheal Sheehy says it took him a long time to stop feeling guilty about being inside on a sunny day

Mon Oct 26 2026 - 06:00 • 5 MIN READ

When Micheal Sheehy stood in the Nasdaq stock market in New York ringing the closing bell five years ago, he pictured his 17-year-old self standing in the school hall in Dingle CBS wondering, “What the heck am I doing here?”

This moment, which saw an image of Sheehy and other executives from financial service firm Payoneer beamed on to a billboard in Times Square was “huge, a big deal”.

But the Irish man in Sheehy was hesitant: “I’m like, I can’t post this on Instagram. Everyone at home will think I’m an a**hole.”

It points to, as the Los Angeles resident sees it, a key difference between Irish people and Americans in the business world. “Irish people just don’t do a good job of self-promotion. It feels uncomfortable. And we’re really quick to point [out] when someone has notions.”

Self-advocating is something Sheehy has had to learn over the past decade in LA, although it felt “really uncomfortable at the beginning”.

As chief compliance officer with Payoneer, Sheehy is part of the executive team navigating a proposed $2.75 billion acquisition with Nuvei.

He feels one of the strengths the Irish bring to the business world is: “We’re really good at, like, calling out bulls**t. And in American corporate life there is a ton of it.”

“I use a lot of humour and I’ll be like, ‘Are you serious?’”

[ London is a city where Irishness gets shouted out, rather than smoothed overOpens in new window ]

Born in the UK to an Irish father, Sheehy moved back to Dingle, Co Kerry when he was 11. “It was great to live in a place where everyone can pronounce your name straight away,” he says.

Growing up in two-channel TV Ireland, with a lot of American programmes, the United States was “very much the promised land” in his younger mind. “I just always wanted to come here. It was just a fascination of mine.”

After studying business and law at Dublin City University, Sheehy got a job in banking in Dublin: “I just was never a corporate fit kind of guy,” he says. “I just didn’t really fit the banking environment.” He grabbed an opportunity to transfer to Boston.

Although he found the east coast city “quiet and not much craic”, the move played a central role in his life, because it’s here he met his now-husband, a Bostonian. “His father is Irish, so he grew up in very similar circumstances to us ... feeling Irish,” he says.

Just a couple of months into dating, Sheehy got a job opportunity in Ireland that he couldn’t pass up. His then boyfriend moved with him. “He definitely had an identity crisis. He got to Ireland and he was seen as an American. He was like, ‘No I’m not American, I’m Irish’ ... People were calling him Johnny the Yank. We always laugh about it.”

[ A message for Ireland from one of the lesser-known Irish-American KennedysOpens in new window ]

Although his husband loved Ireland, after nearly four years he needed to move back. “Some Americans can live anywhere,” Sheehy says. “Most Americans can only live in America because they can’t adjust to other things.” Not wanting to return to the east coast, Sheehy got a job in Los Angeles. He now spends much of his time in LA, travelling to New York regularly for work.

After a decade of LA living, returning to Ireland gives him a “short sharp shock to reality”.

“You get spoiled with convenience in America,” he says, noting how in LA he gets his dry cleaning picked up and returned to his house, or if he needs a blood test his doctor will get them taken in his home.

“My mum and my sister are mortified at the way I carry myself sometimes when I’m back in Ireland,” he says, laughing. He recalls looking for a takeaway coffee at 8am in Co Cork on a Sunday morning, and ending up in the petrol station where the coffee machine wasn’t even turned on. He can see the funny side of his LA habits.

But the biggest differences are a lack of ice and air-conditioning. “I was in Ireland in July ... There was no AC. I was almost hanging around the grocery refrigerator section. I can’t sleep without AC all year round – I need the noise and the breeze on my face.”

He finds himself miffed in Ireland when he’s handed a warm coke and two cubes of ice in a glass. “As soon as you sit down at a table in America, someone will hand you an arctic cold glass of ice water. You don’t even have to ask for it.”

The City of Angels has firmly become home. “I remember the first time when we landed in LAX and I said to my husband ‘Thank God, we’re home’. It was a moment for me.

“Life here is really nice. It changes your mindset. When you wake up every day and the sky is blue and the sun is shining, it’s easy to be positive.

“It took a really long time to be okay with it being sunny outside, but sitting on my couch doing nothing. There’s the guilt. I can still hear my parents in my head being like – the sun is shining, get outside.”

One downside to LA is the lack of a large Irish community. “I always joke that it’s me and Colin Farrell are the only two Irish people here,” Sheehy says.

“I miss the rhythm and the way [in] which, like, Irish people communicate. It feels so genuine, even just with strangers,” he says with a smile.

“One of the hardest things about being an emigrant is the way that Ireland changes,” he says. “You don’t want anything to change in Ireland, and when I return I want everything to stay exactly as I left.”

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