Chairperson
Alison Cowzer is an entrepreneur and co-founder of East Coast Bakehouse. As an investor and Dragon, on RTE’s Dragon’s Den series, she has made investments in a number of start-up enterprises. As Managing Director of The Company of Food, Alison works with a group of High Growth Potential Irish Food SME’s.
She is also Vice Chair of the humanitarian agency GOAL, Director of the Ronald Mc Donald House Charity and Trustee of Rough Magic Theatre Company.
Furkan Karayel is multi award winning diversity and inclusion speaker and author of the best selling book “Inclusive Intelligence: How to be a Role Model for Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace”. Furkan lectures at the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Master’s program at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Her passion is leveraging women-in-tech leadership, diversity and empowering female founders globally.
Furkan founded Diversein.com after 10 years of software engineering experience in multinational tech companies in Ireland. She has been honoured with “Speaker of the Year”, “Diversity and Inclusion Role Model in Business” , “Trailblazer” and “Inclusive Leadership Development” Awards. Additionally, Furkan is an active speaker at international events where she shares her learnings about experiences of the tech world as a woman, her recommendations for inclusive leadership and the power of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Co-founder of Women for Election
Niamh is Head of Public Policy for Ireland and EMEA lead for infrastructure Public Policy at Amazon Web Services (AWS); the cloud computing division of Amazon.com. She co-founded Women for Election (WFE) with Michelle O’Donnell Keating in 2011, and the pair went on to win the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland ‘IMPACT’ award, which enabled them to focus full-time on establishing WFE to deliver its mission to inspire and equip women to succeed in politics. Before AWS Niamh worked in a number of roles in politics and policy, including as CEO of Drinkaware, Director at Women for Election and Research and Policy Analyst at the Children’s Rights Alliance in Dublin. Niamh started her working life as a researcher at Fianna Fail, before moving to London as researcher for Demos, a leading UK think tank, where she co-authored a series of influential reports.
Niamh is now a Board member at Women for Election and a Governor at the Rotunda Hospital. She holds a BA in European Studies from Trinity College Dublin, a Masters Degree in Politics from the London School of Economics and an Executive MBA from the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business.
Maria Joyce is the Coordinator of the National Traveller Women’s Forum where she is leading the organisations mission to empower Traveller Women to achieve full equality and have their identity celebrated.
Using a human rights and community development based approach, she strives to empower Traveller Women in working towards full (gender) equality, supporting them to take leadership roles within their own and the wider community. Maria joined the Board of Women for Election in 2020.
Professor Daire Keogh began his term as President of DCU in July 2020. He previously served as Deputy President of the University (2016-2020). Prior to that, he was President of St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra (2012-2016), and played a key role in its incorporation with DCU.
Daire has published extensively on the history of popular politics, religion and education in Ireland. A former Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellow, he is currently Principal Investigator of an Irish Research Council funded project to publish the extensive correspondence of Cardinal Paul Cullen.
He is a founding member of the European Quality Assurance Register Committee, the body charged by EU Governments with monitoring quality assurance in higher education across the continent. He is a Chartered Director and is a member of several Boards including Women for Election. Daire is also a member of the Irish Association of the Order of Malta, and he recently completed a term as a Council member of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, and a Board member of the Centre for Cross Border Studies (2012-2017).
Daire is a graduate of the National University of Ireland (BA), the Gregorian University Rome (BPh), the University of Glasgow (MTh) and the University of Dublin (PhD).
Treasurer
Teresa is a Certified Accountant and Chartered Director, and a former tax partner in PwC Ireland, where she led the firm’s not-for-profit practice as well as advising family businesses and law firms. She is a non-executive director of Concern Worldwide, Concern Korea Foundation and Business to Arts.
Aldagh McDonogh, Co-Founder of Frankli, Performance Management platform and formerly CEO of Morgan McKinley, a global professional recruitment solutions company. Previously co-founder of a leading marketing services company in Ireland and a finalist in the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Competition. Aldagh holds a number of Board Directorships and is a member of the Institute of Directors.
Eric Ehigie is the Politics Coordinator of Black and Irish and the Youth Officer of the Longford Africans’ Network. He studies law at the University of Galway, and is the co-host of the ‘Political inCorrectors Podcast’, which aims to make Irish political discourse more accessible to young people. He regularly writes on pressing social and political issues, and creates politically conscious content for his YouTube channel. Eric spoke in Dáil Éireann as part of the inaugural Youth Assembly on Climate and has been involved with Student Union activism, formerly sitting on the executive of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union, as both the Welfare Officer and Equality Officer in succeeding terms.
Susan Shannon is currently Shell’s Vice President for Policy & Advocacy. In this role, Susan is responsible for Shell’s global policy and advocacy development, delivery and capability covering more than 70 countries, international organisations and external organisations. With a team of over 80 people globally, Susan is accountable for the external positioning of the company on key issues around Energy Transition and represents the company externally on a range of international policy and advocacy issues.
Prior to this Susan worked in Brussels, where she set up the Brussels branch of Women for Election. She has a BA in History & Politics from Trinity College Dublin and an MSc in Russian & Post Soviet Studies from the London School of Economics.
Niamh has extensive experience at the highest level of government identifying and delivering media and policy goals. With a distinguished background in print and broadcast journalism in Ireland and the USA she has Masters Degree in Business & Economics Journalism from Columbia University with a multi-lingual background in European Studies. Her previous work achievements include being special advisor to the Tánaiste, head of policy in Facebook, director of public Policy EMA in WhatsApp and Head of Communications in Stripe. Niamh currently holds the position of Director in Milltown Partners. A proven communicator and an expert in Crisis and long-term strategic communications.
Colette Kelleher is an Irish former Independent politician who served as a Senator from 2016 to 2020, after being nominated by the Taoiseach. She previously served as the CEO of the Alzheimer’s Society of Ireland.
She comes from Macroom, County Cork, and she formerly worked as a social worker in Dublin. She holds an MBA and she led the Cork Simon Community for eight years before moving to the COPE Foundation.
Company Secretary
Margaret has a BA in Economics and Politics from UCD and an MBA from the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. She is an Associate of the Irish Tax Institute and has extensive experience in the taxation field, particularly in the financial services area. Margaret held the role of Corporate Tax Director with AIB, with responsibility for corporation tax issues for the banking group. She also held directorship roles in a number of AIB subsidiary companies. Margaret has authored course material for specialist certificate courses in banking and leasing taxation for the Irish Tax Institute.
The Countess Markievicz Circle is a core group of donors who have come together to support Women for Election to achieve our vision of an Ireland with balanced participation of women and men in political life.
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