Leaning into Tech

Thady is a Senior Manager in the Accenture CFO&EV Strategy & Consulting Practice. He is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland and was awarded a first class honours in the UCD Smurfit School MBA.

Thady has 20 years’ finance experience with  a track record in successfully implementing change, by leading projects that dramatically improved the finance functions of the organisations he has worked in.

As Partner Success Manager in the Accountants Division at Sage, Paula has responsibility for helping accountants succeed in Ireland by driving cloud adoption in the accounting community. Prior to Sage, Paula worked with top partner accounts in the IT sector for 18 years.   

Jon has over 10 years' experience working in the accountancy software industry. And played a key role in developing accountancy partnerships.  Leading Surf Accounts Sales team Jon has helped build Surf Accounts sales function from start to over 10,000 businesses and €2M in revenue & growing.

Overseeing Satago’s relationships with Industry Bodies, Chambers of Commerce and Business Growth organisations in the UK, Angela is currently leading on the rollout of Satago to the Irish market. Angela has formerly held senior Commercial and Partnership positions with the Irish International Business Network (IIBN) and the Irish international humanitarian agency, GOAL Global.   

Eibhlin Johnston is an author, speaker, transformational coach, executive coach, career coach and trainer.  She has 29 years’ experience working in blue-chip organisations across of range of business areas.  Eibhlin established The Resiliency Hub in 2019 to provide coaching and training across a range of levels and businesses.  She has 15 years’ coaching experience across a broad client base.  Eibhlin has delivered training on a range of topics, including communication and strategic change initiatives. She was the lead of the Women’s Network in JP Morgan and was appointed as a senior mentor in the Bank.  Eibhlin is a qualified iheart facilitator, trainer and coach.  iheart provides a range of resiliency training to young people and their parents. She published her first book, Gut Throat Leadership in September 2019. The book is an exploration of leadership and the way we think and lead. 

From the moment I entered the world of work as a teenager, I quickly noticed the variety that existed in the behaviours of the people who were managing me. Some managers liked to let me know who was ‘boss’. Others collaborated and treated me like an equal. Some took everything in their stride, whereas others got stressed and took it out on those around them. I noticed the difference that both line managers and CEOs made on how committed I felt to the organisation’s purpose and brand. I became fascinated with self-awareness, behaviour and communication in the workplace.

I have since trained and worked as a Psychologist (BA Hons in Psychology, Ph.D Psychology, Diploma in Statistics) and Coach (Diploma in Personal and Executive Coaching, Master Practitioner in NLP, Certificate in Training and Development, Certificate in Qigong and Meditation), and in parallel also spent many years in theatre, film and tv as an actor. As well as taking me way out of my comfort zone, and improving my confidence, working as an actor taught me many skills in a wide variety of areas including communication, collaboration and of course the importance of following our passions and dealing with rejection. It also gave me an education in script-writing and production.

My work as a psychologist, coach and actor all interweaved nicely over the years: an ongoing exploration of human behaviour!

These days, over 20 years as a psychologist, and nearly 15 years as a Coach and Learning Consultant working across Multinationals, SME’s, Governmental and Educational agencies, I work with leaders, managers, team leads and teams who are deeply committed to growth, positive change and making sustainable breakthroughs in their self-awareness, behaviour and communication. I also speak regularly on related topics at events, conferences, webinars, podcasts and have appeared on TV, radio and in national press, giving psychological input on a range of topics.

On starting my own business in 2007, and since then, my approach to coaching, and working with leaders, teams and organisations has been experiential and interactive which was definitely inspired by my varied background and education. My focus remains on self-awareness, behaviour and communication, and on narrowing the gaps that exist between learning and the real world of work and life.

See my books 'Our Learning Brain' and 'Developing Learning Habits', published by Oak Tress Press and available at successstore.com and Amazon.

Adam Ball is co-founder of Prommt and Managing Director of Prommt UK, a modern streamlined payment collection platform which allows businesses to request, accept and track payments from their customers - quickly and securely. Prommt has more than 4,500 users across the UK and Ireland with a growing focus internationally.

Leading a global team responsible for winning new business and supporting the 60,000+ clients already using the GoCardless platform, Pranav previously led the International Expansion team, overseeing the company’s growth across ANZ, Europe and the US. Prior to that, Pranav was Director of Business Operations and Strategy, spearheading the company’s $75m Series E fundraiser.  

Fire is a digital account provider helping businesses and platforms integrate and embed accounts, cards and payments into their application and solutions. Fire has thousands of clients including some of the world’s largest financial institutions. Customer may open all the accounts and issue all the cards they require and access a host of payment services with the Fire API.

fire.com is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland in the EU and authorised by the FCA in the UK.

In 2000 Colm founded Realex Payments which became one of Europe’s largest online payment gateways, processing in excess of €28B euro per annum in online payments for over 12,500 retailers, including some of the world’s leading brands.

Colm is a member of the UK Finance Payments, Products & Services Board, where he represents the interests of non-bank financial institutions and is Chair of the Digital PSP Group. He is also a member of numerous Open Banking groups and a member of the Strategic Participant Group for the NPA with Pay.UK. 

As Director and leader of EY’s Cybersecurity practice, Ross leads a highly specialised team as part of the Technology Consulting service offering based in the EY Dublin office. With close to 20 years’ experience in IT, Cybersecurity and IT Risk Management, Ross has worked across a range of sectors, including technology, financial services, retail, government, manufacturing and utilities. 

Paul is a manager in Bank of Ireland’s Security team and has over 10 years’ experience across a range of fraud and security roles including operational fraud prevention and strategic design.  His key focus is in understanding current and emerging fraud and cybersecurity threats and using that information to promote awareness through sharing simple steps that everyone can take to protect themselves.

Joe McGivern is the CEO of supportIT with well over 20 years of experience providing Security, Cloud, Managed IT Support, Infrastructure and Business Continuity solutions to organisations in Ireland and internationally. Joe set up supportIT in 2004 and has developed the business to provide a nationwide IT Support and Consultancy company with hundreds of companies benefiting from both Joe and his team's experience and guidance.

Sarah Hipkin leads the Mazars in Ireland Technology Consulting practice. Sarah has over 20 years’ experience working in cyber security, technology and data governance in the USA, Asia, Australia and Europe.

Before joining Mazars, Sarah was the Head of Cyber Governance for Woolworths Group, Australia, with its 200,000 employees. At various points, she acted as the Chief Information Security Officer. Her remit included running the security operations centre, managing cyber security incident response, and breach management. This was a high-pressure environment that required immediate responses to fraud and security attacks. Before joining Woolworths, Sarah worked for PwC Australia and was part of the CIO advisory services across many clients in various industries.

Sarah combines her strong technology background with training in behaviour analysis which helps organisational change, developing plans that will be accepted and implemented and thinking through the human risks associated with an environment.