PUBLIC SECTOR LEADERS AWARD

This category recognises four women who hold senior positions and are making an impact on the public sector in Ireland and/or Europe.

EILEEN CREEDON Chief State Solicitor

Eileen Creedon graduated from University College Cork with a BCL degree in 1984 and received her professional training at the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland. She was enrolled as a solicitor in 1987. She served her apprenticeship with Michael Powell & Co Solicitors and spent a further eight years in private practice with JW O’Donovan & Co Solicitors concentrating on commercial conveyancing and litigation.

She joined the Chief State Solicitor’s office in 1995 and worked in a number of areas in that office to include civil litigation, State property and criminal prosecution work.

In 2001, she joined the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. She was appointed the first deputy chief prosecution solicitor in 2007. She was subsequently appointed chief prosecution solicitor in 2010. In January 2012, following an open competition, she was appointed as the first female chief state solicitor and returned to the Chief State Solicitor’s Office.

SHARON DONNERY Deputy Governor (Central Banking), Central Bank of Ireland

Sharon Donnery was appointed to the position of Deputy Governor — Central Banking with effect from March 1 2016. She is an ex-officio member of the Central Bank Commission and the Governor’s Alternate on the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB). Sharon previously served as the Central Bank’s Alternate Member of the Supervisory Board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. She is chairwoman of the SSM High Level Group on Non-Performing Loans and was also appointed Chair of the ECB Budget Committee in December 2016.

Sharon joined the Central Bank in 1996 as an economist in the Monetary Policy Division and has held a range of senior positions as head of division. From February 2013 to August 2014, she held the statutory position of registrar of Credit Unions and, from April 2014 to May 2016, was director of Credit Institutions. She was also vice-chairwoman of the European Banking Authority’s Standing Committee on Consumer Protection and Financial Innovation.

Sharon holds a BA in Economics and Politics and an MA in Economics from University College Dublin.

DEE FORBES Director General, RTE

Dee Forbes officially took up the role of director general at RTE last July. Before this she was based in London.

Most recently she was president and managing director of Discovery Networks Northern Europe. Dee joined Discovery in 2010 as head of the UK/Ireland operation and progressively grew her responsibilities to eventually lead the Northern Europe region, which included 18 markets and territories and 27 channels, which broadcast to more than 276 million households across Northern Europe each month. Before joining Discovery, Dee led Turner Broadcasting’s business in the UK and Ireland, which consisted of seven entertainment channels, including Cartoon Network, Boomerang and TCM. She spent several years at Turner in a variety of commercial roles including general manager for the Nordic/ Central and Eastern Europe and EMEA regions and head of advertising sales for Europe.

Dee is a former non-executive director of the board of the Irish Times and currently sits on the board of Munster Rugby. Dee is also a member of the Irish Advisory Board for UCD Business School. She is a founder and board member of Ireland’s first rural digital centre, the Ludgate Hub, Skibbereen. A native of Drimoleague in West Cork, she is a graduate of UCD where she studied history and politics.

SIOFRA O’LEARY Judge at the European Court of Human Rights

In July 2015, Síofra O’Leary, BCL (University College Dublin), PhD (European University Institute) was sworn in as a Judge at the European Court of Human Rights, elected in respect of Ireland.

Before this, Judge O’Leary worked for 18 years at the Court of Justice of the European Union, where she served as a ‘référendaire’ and Chef de cabinet for judges Aindrias Ó Caoimh, Fidelma Macken and Federico Mancini. She later ran part of that court’s research directorate.

Judge O’Leary has been a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges for many years where she has taught LLM courses on EU law and the individual, EU Social Law and Policy as well as a judicial workshop.

She has, in recent years, been a member of the editorial board of the Common Market Law Review and is now a member of both its advisory board and the board of the Irish Centre for European Law. In 2016 she was elected an Honorary Bencher of the Honorable Society of King’s Inns.

Before joining the Court of Justice of the European Union, Siofra O’Leary was the assistant director for the Centre of European Legal Studies at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Emmanuel College. She was previously a visiting fellow at the Faculty of Law, University College Dublin, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cadiz, and a research associate at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London.