Helen Shaw is young - only 35 - and as Director of Radio at RTE is the first woman to reach such a senior position in Irish broadcasting. It is also less than two years since she was just another radio producer at RTE complaining over coffee about not being able to get a programme made, or how unimaginative management was.
Now she is the management. Only 20 months after leaving RTE to take charge of radio current affairs in BBC Northern Ireland, she has the top job.
In her first week in the role she still seems close enough to the studio floor. She talks about the most important people being those who make the programmes. She even sounds as if she means it.
One of her plans is to appoint an editor for Radio 1. This will mean the end of a middle management structure that has been the subject of much criticism even within RTE radio itself.
Instead of working to particular department heads - in current affairs, light entertainment, factual programmes - producers will work for Radio 1. The decision will be a popular one among programme makers.
"The departmental nature of what we do will change. We will work for Radio 1, not for any one department," she says.
Programme makers and listeners are the important elements in radio. It is the bond created between both that makes good radio, she says.
It takes time to put your stamp on a radio service. The autumn schedule is already in place and still reflects the changes made in anticipation of Radio Ireland.
She seems less concerned to effect changes at 2FM, and says her first task will be to revamp Radio 1's drive-time format, which presumably means major changes for the Daily Record slot.
"We could do a lot more with the 5 to 7 p.m. market."
Radio 1 needs "refocusing", she says. "It needs a clearer voice. It needs to be re-branded and people have to have a clear identification with Radio 1."
While Ms Shaw affects the marketing-speak so beloved of broadcasting executives, she can also be passionate about radio.
"Radio is about telling stories; it is layered and varied. It is the medium that can get into the heads of listeners, into their hearts and souls."
Other broadcasters are very jealous of the strength of RTE's top personalities, such as Gay Byrne, Marian Finucane and Pat Kenny. She knows this from her former colleagues in the BBC. No other station increases its audience after 1.30 p.m. the way Liveline can, she says. The audience figures are good. "This is not a station with problems."
She wants to get a younger audience for Radio 1, so that the core audience starts at 35 years rather than older.
Ms Shaw started her career as a freelance journalist with Magill, and then worked as a reporter with The Irish Times before training to be a producer with RTE.
Her experience at the BBC was defining, and separated her from the other 22 candidates who applied for the post of director of radio at RTE, including some who are now her subordinates. She did a very good job at the BBC, she tells you without a blush.
Aside from RTE she listens to BBC Radio 4 and BBC Five Live. She has great admiration for Five Live, which her colleagues should now tune into if they want to hear what might be expected of them. Five Live is very exciting, it reinvented radio, she says.
She talks with admiration of James Boyle, the director of Radio 4, as being involved in the "greatest radio project in these islands". He is currently introducing fundamental changes to the schedule, which have been the cause of major controversy as he sets about changing one of Britain's great, but conservative, institutions.
When Helen Shaw talks of giving RTE Radio 1 a fresher feel, making it more in tune with modern Ireland, one feels she might like to be a James Boyle shaking up an institution, despite her protestations that she believes in evolution rather than revolution.
She has also listened to a lot of Radio Ireland. She hopes it will find its feet, though without having too great an impact on RTE.
Irish listeners deserve choice, she says. Some of its programming is strong, especially in the evenings, but she feels it has not defined itself well enough. "It does not seem to know whether it is competition with Radio 1 or 2FM."
She likes talk radio but demands a definition of the term. So much of it is insubstantial, she says.
Radio is more than just a studio, a phone line and a guest. If it is about anything it is about imagination, Ms Shaw believes.