Brian Donnelly: 0:02

He's like well, you at least have to limit it to one glass a day. And he told the physician. He said, sure, I'll do that. And I'm pretty sure he went directly to McDonald's he got like the supersized meal and he got that plastic cup and he would start his day by pouring some whiskey into a large cup and then he would sip it.

Crista Cowan: 0:21

And that was his one glass a day.

Brian Donnelly: 0:22

One glass a day. Gotta be very specific with the Donnellys.

Crista Cowan: 0:28

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. I don't know about your family, but when my family gets together, there are tons of inside jokes, things that we have brought up from our childhood, that we continue to bring up to needle, that one sibling, or a way that my mom pronounces certain words that we never let her live down. I think that's one of the things about family culture and family narrative that I love so much is that when a family gets together, you can tell their family, because they have their own language and their own stories and their own way of communicating with each other.

Crista Cowan: 1:25

My guest today is the Chief Commercial Officer at Ancestry, Brian Donnelly, and I'm so excited to have him in the studio having this conversation and sharing his family stories and maybe a few inside jokes as well. Brian, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to A hear some of your stories but B learn a little bit more about you and your journey to Ancestry. So tell us a little bit about what you were doing before you came to Ancestry.

Brian Donnelly: 1:56

Yeah, so before coming to Ancestry, I've worked in life sciences and genomics for like 15 or 20 years, so I was in a very different industry but have always been very interested in genetics, and so when I had the opportunity to join Ancestry, I jumped on it.

Crista Cowan: 2:10

And that was how long ago, four years ago. Okay, and so what were you hired to do at Ancestry?

Brian Donnelly: 2:15

Yeah, so I originally joined the Ancestry DNA team, so with my background being in life sciences and genomics, that was very natural fit, and so I was originally looking after our product development for our DNA customers, as well as all of our operations, so things like how we get all those boxes all around the world and how we get them to a lab and then get results to our customers.

Crista Cowan: 2:34

That's amazing. And then very quickly, your career at Ancestry pivoted a little bit. Tell us about that.

Brian Donnelly: 2:45

Yeah. So after about a year which and first of all I should just say, like I, I really I really enjoy what I do at Ancestry Great company and I've learned so much about just this family history category, which I did not appreciate prior to joining. So after a year leading the DNA org, I had the opportunity to also look after our international organization and I got much more familiar with the family history piece then. And so that's our business in the UK, canada and Australia along with. We actually sell AncestryDNA in 120 markets, so many countries, but those are the big English speaking markets. And then, a year after that, I also picked up our US business, as well as our family history verticals businesses, so things like newspaperscom, fold3, forces War, janaina, all the wonderful products and properties that we have.

Crista Cowan: 3:30

Yeah, I love that. So what is like one thing you've learned about family history in that time that surprised you or was exciting for you?

Brian Donnelly: 3:38

Yeah. So just how powerful family history is is something that I don't think I wasn't ready for it, but when I began to discover it personally and then see it for our customers, it's just really, really compelling. Like when you learn you know stories about your family and your ancestors, especially when it's someone who you had a relationship with, but you just uncover something about them that you really never knew, you just you know. It just really deepens the relationship that you have with some of your ancestors.

Crista Cowan: 4:06

Yeah. So tell us a little bit about what you did know about your family before you started on your family history journey.

Brian Donnelly: 4:13

Sure, or what I thought I knew, yeah, so well, what I knew was, effectively, that we were Irish and German. Those were like the only things that I had ever known about my family. My grandfather and grandmother on my father's side came over from Ireland. They're both from Belfast, actually, and so I knew they were from Ireland, that they had deep roots in Ireland and that we were really Irish from there. So I assumed that we were like 50% Irish from that side of the family and then on my mother's side, irish and German and like very similar.

Brian Donnelly: 4:43

There was a German immigration story that I was familiar with and there was some Irish heritage that I was familiar with and that was it, like I knew there were a lot of people. I didn't know where they were, and I started to really uncover the story during orientation at Ancestry. I remember with you actually building my tree, and all of a sudden there was just like all of these ancestor hints, all of these you know, folks who are related to my grandparents and great grandparents, and suddenly we're back in the 1700s.

Crista Cowan: 5:12

It's just like wild and so fun. Yeah for sure. Did you know all four of your grandparents?

Brian Donnelly: 5:16

I did so I as as kids, so I had the benefit of actually spending time with all of them. My, my mother's parents lived in Florida. I grew up in New Jersey, so we would visit them once or twice a year you know, we're chasing the sun and then my father's parents lived in northern part of New Jersey and so we'd see them all the time. Big families, Big families. So gosh, yes, big families. So I have like three sisters, four half sisters, so I have a pretty big set of people I'm related to from my mother and father's first marriages. So I have like three sisters, four half sisters, so I have a pretty big set of people I'm related to from my mother and father's first marriages. So just a large sort of family situation. My father's side of the family, every generation has like seven children and this goes back, you know, six, seven generations. So there's seems Irish. I have yeah, it seems Irish. I have something like 35,000 DNA matches on ancestry. Uh, just as a by-product of this.

Crista Cowan: 6:10

Sure, so um so, New Jersey family. How many siblings did your dad have? Did you grow up with lots of aunts and uncles and cousins?

Brian Donnelly: 6:18

Yeah, yeah, lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. So, um, geez, let's think so. My dad, um, had two sisters and a brother, um, there was a period where everyone lived in New Jersey and then, as typical with New Jersey, we have the snowbirds in the East coast, so everyone eventually goes South cause they get away from the cold weather. So, his, um, but so I spent a lot of great time with my uncles and aunts there. Actually, my parents met through my uncle. So my mother was divorced, had three daughters and she was getting a bike for, or bicycles for, the kids. And there was a store, point Pleasant Bike Shop and it was my father's brother's bike shop. And so she went there, they met, she bought three bikes and, as I think she was walking out, he said, like hey, I have a brother's bike shop. And so she went there, they met, she bought three bikes and, as I think she was walking out, they said he'd said like hey, I have a brother who's single, you should meet him. And introduced them. And then they got, they got married.

Crista Cowan: 7:11

I love. I love that you know the story of how your parents met.

Brian Donnelly: 7:14

Yeah, that's important. I actually spent a ton of time in that bike shop. It's a fun place to be when you're a kid.

Crista Cowan: 7:26

I love that, that and that. That's growing up around family like that. How do you think your experience maybe was different, like or unique in that? In that respect, sure.

Brian Donnelly: 7:32

Well, you know, I think in many ways our family is very similar to most, which is that, like we got together for the holidays, right? So like every holiday we would come together, but there were a couple of, you know, like my uncle being close, in the town next door, we'd go there and see him and silly things like get a dinner or go watch wrestlemania at their house. You know, I should say this happened both sides of my family, my mother's, uh, siblings, were also close, but so definitely had the opportunity to really get to know my aunts and uncles growing up, which was was great Cousins, same thing. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of cousins, but the age gap between myself and my sisters, like it, starts to grow, and so on my father's side I have a half sister who's I'm the same age as her daughter, as an example. So it's pretty big old.

Crista Cowan: 8:20

Irish family. Yeah, I think that happens in my dad's family too. The oldest cousin, I think she's 78 now and the youngest cousin is 45. Right, so you have kind of these you know big generations. When there's families like that, which I think is fun, like, yeah, it means that I know my dad's cousins really well because some of them are closer in age to me than they are to him and um, and the dynamics of that are really interesting to me, which I just I think it's fun.

Brian Donnelly: 8:49

It's fun when you're young because you have someone your age who calls you Uncle Brian, Just because it's funny. But that was like we always really enjoyed the joke on that one, which was great. And then, yeah, you just see multiple generations and it's a good opportunity to see how life works.

Crista Cowan: 9:02

I love that. Well, you came into family history through DNA, and so I'm super curious to learn what kinds of DNA discoveries you, or how DNA has helped you make discoveries.

Brian Donnelly: 9:13

Sure. Well, the first thing that we learned is that we're not as Irish as we thought. So I mentioned that I thought my family had these deep roots in Ireland and I did the ancestry DNA test test and it came back that I was more Scottish than Irish, and so that was. That was a surprise. Then I got to learn all about, First of all, like why the results showed up like that, but that was definitely a surprise. I didn't have the Irish tattoo, fortunately, but there was a day I considered it and so I'm very glad I didn't didn't get that. So that was a pretty interesting discovery. And then you know the other thing I for in my family, my, my paternal grandmother. We just don't know a lot about her side of the family, and so I've been using, like, the DNA matches to try to get to understand just you know who they were and try to get further back in the tree.

Crista Cowan: 10:02

I love that. Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of people identify so much, especially when you've got grandparents who are immigrants, identify with a place. But DNA travels, turns out and has for hundreds of years, but particularly Northern Ireland, and I'm sure you know this now but, for the benefit of those listening, the whole concept of the Ulster plantation was a revelation to me as well. My Cowan line is also from the Belfast area, back a few more generations than yours, but they came from County Down and I thought, oh, we must have deep roots there and that's why we're Irish and that's why Cowan is Irish.

Crista Cowan: 10:39

And I remember once going to a university in Glasgow we were doing some content acquisition that was my first job at Ancestry and I was meeting with a professor there and he said, oh, your last name is Cowan, you must be Scottish. And I said, nope, I'm actually Irish. And he goes Nope, you're actually Scottish. And I said you're gonna have to explain that. And he explained to me that Cowan is actually a Scottish occupation name and he said Where's your family from? I said they came from County Down.

Crista Cowan: 11:06

He said, oh, they were part of the Ulster plantation. And I was like, well, what is that? And he explained to me the, you know, forcible removal of some of the Irish people and the way that the British were taking over parts of Ireland was by forcibly moving Scottish people to Ireland to claim the land, and that my family had been part of that, probably in the, you know, late 16, early 1700s and lived then in Ireland for two or three generations before finally immigrating to America. And, and yeah, so, like we tend to identify with a place as part of our name, as part of our heritage, and DNA sometimes reveals there's more to the story.

Brian Donnelly: 11:42

That's right. Well then I went on this like I had to find a Scottish ancestor, so it actually really inspired me to like really go as far back as I possibly could in the tree and I eventually found someone in Scotland, which made me happy. But it's also just interesting you find all these like fascinating things about your ancestors. I found one who was a huntsman.

Brian Donnelly: 12:04

Like last name or occupation, occupation, yeah, and so he was like the master of the hound for hunting parties and like I always found that really interesting because I love dogs, I was like, okay, okay, like maybe you know, maybe there is something genetic here, uh, related to that, uh, and so it's just fascinating what you, what you find the further you go back and the records that you can, that you can look at yeah, any favorite record you've seen yes, um the well.

Brian Donnelly: 12:27

I've seen amazing records and that's just something I think about ancestry and about family history that I really didn't appreciate until getting there is you see these like beautiful images and you're like this is unbelievable. So my favorite record is, um my grandfather, my grandfather from Ireland's naturalization record, and the reason why I love it is it's it's got his photo when he was like 19 years old and I've never yeah, I remember him being 84 years old. So from my memory of who he was and what he looked like, to suddenly seeing him as a teenager getting on a boat to go across the sea to move to New York city is like just a wild piece of history.

Crista Cowan: 13:08

Yeah, for sure, and how great. Like you, you kind of see those records and it does. It puts you in that mind frame and that place and that time, and you think about your grandfather that you knew as an old man, had this whole life and was this whole person and probably has a whole lot of stories, not just because he's Irish but because of the life that he lived. And do you have favorite stories or favorite memories of your grandfather?

Brian Donnelly: 13:32

Yeah, absolutely the um. I have many, but the. Let's see where to start first. Um, as he got older he got more stubborn, which I think is just the way it's supposed to work. You're sort of earned that with age and um, and so the two stories. They're both related. So one is um, I was actually with him in our house, um, so he was at our house.

Brian Donnelly: 13:53

I think he was watching me, cause my parents were bringing my sisters to some sporting event, and he was on a lazy boy chair. I was on a couch. We were both watching TV. How old are you? Um, we're talking like nine or 10, like young.

Brian Donnelly: 14:07

And he looked at me and he said Brian, and he had, he had this great accent. I can't do it, unfortunately at all, but I wish I could. He's like, brian, don't worry, but I'm having a heart attack. And I looked at him and I was like is he messing with me? And he was totally serious. I was like, okay, how do I help? And I'm like my heart rates through the roof, right. And he's like it's fine, this happens to me many times. All I need is a warm glass of milk. So I went to the kitchen, I got a cup of milk. I put it in the microwave, I brought it to him and I thought we were done. So I gave him the cup of milk and he was really calm about it.

Brian Donnelly: 14:39

Maybe an hour later my parents came home and they were like, oh, how was your day? I was like, oh, pretty good. Grandpa had a heart attack. I got him the milk, so we're good. And they were like, what? So before that turned out to be his like a second or third heart attack, we've got some, some, some history of heart disease. And and actually this leads to my second favorite story about him the physician, the cardiologist, said hey, you have to stop drinking. And he's like I'm sorry, but I'm from Belfast, I'm not going to stop drinking. He's like, well, you at least have to limit it to one glass a day. And he told the physician he said, sure, I'll do that, one glass a day. And he told the physician he said, sure, I'll do that. And I'm pretty sure he went directly to McDonald's. He got like a, like the um, the supersized meal, and he got that plastic cup and he would start his day by pouring some whiskey into a large cup and then he would sip it.

Crista Cowan: 15:27

And that was his one glass a day.

Brian Donnelly: 15:28

One glass a day? Yeah, Gotta be very specific with the Donnelly's Right.

Crista Cowan: 15:33

That's amazing. He sounds like a character. He was great. Yeah, absolutely he loved overripe bananas.

Brian Donnelly: 15:39

He'd put all his bananas in the fridge Okay, which is something that and liver. He also liked liver, and I will say that as I've gotten older, I get it they're both great.

Crista Cowan: 15:49

Okay, I'm not sure about the overripe bananas. You should try it. Put it in the fridge.

Brian Donnelly: 15:54

It'll brown up. It's actually pretty nice Okay.

Crista Cowan: 15:58

I'll have to take your word for it. Your grandparents stayed married.

Brian Donnelly: 16:02

Yeah, so my grandparents stayed married they, yeah, and my grandfather so they got married. Actually, another ancestry story. I was trying to figure out when and where they got married, and I had always assumed they were married in Ireland because they, um, they had a child in Ireland, um, but it turned out that wasn't the case, and so, after um years of searching, um, someone was able to help me find their marriage certificate in Newark, new Jersey. And so they, they were married after they had a child. They both were, uh, in the U S, us, and then they got married in Newark. They hunkered down in Northern New Jersey in a town called Union, and they'd lived in the same house for like 40 years, and so, yeah, that was it.

Crista Cowan: 16:44

They did. They immigrate together or did he come first? He came first, Okay.

Brian Donnelly: 16:49

And you know there's like some family lore and then what you can deduce. But he came first, got a job as a elevator person in a hotel in New York city, um, bellman, elevator Bellman, so um, but so he had that job and he worked for like a year, went back to Ireland, um, and then basically like got my grandmother and they came back, uh, and that was how they came to the, came to the U S.

Crista Cowan: 17:13

Okay.

Brian Donnelly: 17:13

And then, in a strange world, he worked at the hotel forever and my father, when he turned 18, so this is like 20 years later worked at the same hotel as a dishwasher. So they used to commute to work together.

Crista Cowan: 17:24

Very cool. I love that as you continue to make family history discoveries, as you kind of think about like what's next for family history in general, but also maybe for some of your own family stories. What is that? Yeah, what do you hope for the future? What does that look like? Yeah, no-transcript.

Brian Donnelly: 18:03

Like you should be able to take a DNA test and have a tree show up, because we should be able to really get there. So that's one. I think there's a lot to discover with DNA. Two is just for family history generally, like traditional birth, marriage, death records, census records, like really great content. But I think if you again you look out over the next 20 years, there's probably going to be some really amazing unique content sets that we're not even thinking about today and then you like overlay AI against that and you're just going to have this magical storytelling about folks that are, you know, up and down your tree in a way that we can't even perhaps fathom doing today.

Brian Donnelly: 18:41

Sure, the other thing that always stands out to me is you know I married three kids and you know like your legacy with your family, and I think for all of us like having the ability to. Sure, one is like discover our family, but then two is to like share that with your families so that these stories don't get lost and that you can like pass this on. I think is a really important piece of what we're doing.

Crista Cowan: 19:06

So you have children. Indeed how many.

Brian Donnelly: 19:08

I have three children. How old are they? They are nine, seven and five.

Crista Cowan: 19:11

Okay, so they're kind of right like prime storytelling age.

Brian Donnelly: 19:15

Yes, they're at the perfect storytelling age. They love hearing about everything, like anything you could tell them about, like your family, your ancestors, like things you did when you were a kid yeah.

Crista Cowan: 19:26

They all resonate really well with them. So have you told them the story of you and grandpa and the heart attack?

Brian Donnelly: 19:29

Oh, actually, I recently told my oldest about this story in the context of warm milk, which is just, you know, trying to get your kids to have, you know, things that are like high in protein. And so I was sharing this story about sitting next to my grandfather and he had a heart attack and how we got him a glass of milk and his you know it's funny his reaction is just like did he die? He's like no, he actually was fine. We sat and we watched TV and he was like, oh cool. But so there is all these stories that, like you, do want to share and pass along, and the thing that I just love now with having young people in the house is the way they interpret the story and then they're like what they say right away is just hilarious.

Crista Cowan: 20:07

Yeah, and that really starts to create a family culture too. Right, because, as you share the stories, not just of you and your grandfather, or the stories about them, but also maybe even stories about your own childhood Sure Right, you knew the story of how your parents met. Yeah, like, do the kids know the story of how you and your wife met?

Brian Donnelly: 20:25

So actually they do so and and it's this is a fun story for us. So I actually met Lauren. We've edited a bookstore, I'm in a Barnes and Noble the nonfiction bestsellers rack, and and we were recently back in New Jersey and we, we, we brought the kids to Barnes and Noble and we showed them where we met.

Crista Cowan: 20:40

The exact spot, yeah, the exact spot, the rack's still there.

Brian Donnelly: 20:43

But sharing stories like this, I think, is really fun for the kids because it allows them to like become a part of, like a bigger part of your life. And the story about like my grandfather it's funny. What they remember about the story today isn't probably what I want them to remember about it in the future. So I do sometimes struggle with like, what's the best way to like document this and save this. So I've just been like you know, I upload a bunch of photos, I like type in my my little stories and I hope at some point someone someone reads them and looks at them.

Crista Cowan: 21:10

Yeah, I love that, but really that even just the sharing of the snippets, no matter how they interpret them now, the, the process of sharing those stories, creates this like family fabric of inside jokes about warm milk and, like you know, the, the knowledge of how mom and dad met and being knowing, I've stood in that exact spot and, like each of those little things are just, I think, a weaving together of this connection in a family which is really powerful, and I love that you're doing that.

Brian Donnelly: 21:37

Yeah, you just reminded me. There's actually two good inside jokes in my family. So one is the warm milk. So if you have any sort of ailment, I'm like, have you had some warm milk? And the other is aloe, Like the gel. Yeah, so my great uncle and he lived in Florida and when I was a kid I used to go visit him and because of my Scottish and Irish heritage I tend to sunburn, and so he had these big aloe trees outside and so I'd turn lobster red and he would cut the aloe for you.

Crista Cowan: 22:05

Peel the leaves.

Brian Donnelly: 22:07

And eventually aloe became like the cure-all. So on the Donnelly side it's warm milk and on the Henneberg side it is aloe. And so, if you have, a cold, you just pop a little bit of aloe.

Crista Cowan: 22:17

You'll be fine. That's fantastic. You mentioned new employee orientation and starting your own tree on your first days at Ancestry. That's one of my favorite parts of my job.

Crista Cowan: 22:27

I believe it Is to sit with those new employees an hour on day one, an hour on day two, get them started in their family trees and I always give homework on day one because I'm going to see them on day two. I can do that and after I have them start their family tree, the homework that I give is I tell them I want you to think about a person in your family who knows more about your family history than you do and just send them a quick text, tell them you started your new job at Ancestry and ask if you can set up a time to have a family history conversation with them. And then tomorrow I'm going to come back and I'm going to ask you who you chose and why, and then what their response was. And those responses that I get from people that, to me, is the heart of family history. They're like, oh my gosh, I called my grandpa and he wants to talk to me on Saturday and he has a box of things for me.

Crista Cowan: 23:18

Or I talked to my aunt and she's like just so excited. I'm interested. The family history is absolutely about connecting us with our ancestors, understanding our traits, understanding where in the world we come from. But there is something really powerful about its ability to connect us with our living family members, as well, oh yeah, absolutely Well.

Brian Donnelly: 23:39

and actually just to point, so you know I like to go for extra credit. So I reached out to two family members when you asked me to do this, and one of them is my aunt, so my father's sister, and honestly I hadn't talked to her in years and she is a treasure trove of information about the family and it's actually like completely rekindled our relationship. So we now email pretty regularly, you know she's, and like we, we have a lot of conversations about family and what's become really interesting there is she knows so much and you just, you know, like I enjoy talking to her, but every now and then I'll just ask a question and it'll trigger like a whole set of facts that I've never heard before. And then the other, you know, I asked my mother.

Brian Donnelly: 24:18

I had this other really important person in our family, my great uncle, uncle Andy, and, and so we started talking about Uncle Andy and in fact that was. You also asked us to get an heirloom. I had an Uncle Andy military heirloom, and so I've got all of these great new stories about Uncle Andy. So we have this amazing new feature networks and one of the things that you can do with it is. You can take a photo and then you have the ability to recognize people in the photo and I have this unbelievably cool photo of his military regimen and I've actually been able to identify people who he served with and now we can create a network for them and it's like so exciting that I can learn about these people who played a really important role in his life, who otherwise I had like no ability to do.

Crista Cowan: 25:00

Yeah, absolutely.

Brian Donnelly: 25:01

Yeah, so anyhow.

Crista Cowan: 25:03

I love that. Yeah, it's interesting because you think about the ability to not just learn a story or see a photo, but really what we're doing is reconstructing their lives and learning who they were as whole people, and whether that's your grandfather and the way you viewed him through child's eyes and how that changes as you learn more about his stories. Or uncle andy, and I'm excited to see what else you as, as network tools, become more robust, what else you can discover, because one of the things I've already seen happen with networks is as you find who those other people were he served with and maybe start contacting their children or grandchildren. They they may have photos you've never seen of him, they may have stories, they may have memories or audio recordings or written biographies of their family members that include pieces of story about Uncle Andy.

Brian Donnelly: 25:54

Yes.

Crista Cowan: 25:55

Right, yes, which like the fact that we all carry around, not just in our DNA but even in our living family, memory stories of each other. That's powerful.

Brian Donnelly: 26:06

Absolutely the thing about DNA testing the sooner the better. Like that's the one thing I didn't know, and so, like my father passed a while ago now but I really wish that I had him do a DNA test, just because so much of the genetics are, you know, like he only passes down half to his child, and so there's just real value in like getting as many people as possible to take a DNA test. Um, because you will learn more about your family and you'll it'll help you make great discovery. So that's the thing I always impart on folks. And then the other is you have downtime, just get on it like, just use, use ancestry there's. You're going to learn so much. It's so much more interesting than I even knew it was going to be when I started, and now I'm like totally addicted. I I'm on all the time just trying to find new discoveries about family members.

Crista Cowan: 26:51

Well, Brian, thank you for being here.

Brian Donnelly: 26:53

Thank you so much for having me.

Crista Cowan: 26:54

I really enjoyed it. I appreciate that, as a leader in ancestry, that you are involved in your own family history, because that means that you're making decisions that are best for our customers, because you understand what it is to be a customer.

Brian Donnelly: 27:09

I hope so.