The Institute of Directors (IoD) is organising its historical Women’s Leadership Conference at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Belfast on 6 March 2020.
The line-up of speakers will include award-winning astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, journalist and disability rights activist Joanne O’Riordan and Breege O’Donoghue, matriarch of Penneys and Primark.
Joanne O’Riordan has an extremely rare condition which meant that she was born without all four limbs. A sports journalist and disability rights activist, she addressed the UN in 2012 aged just 16.
A visiting professor at Oxford University and originally from Lurgan, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s discovery of radio pulsars was hailed as one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, but she was excluded from the Nobel Prize citation in favour of her male colleagues.
She also recently received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad from Irish President Michael D Higgins.
Breege O’Donoghue was part of the vaunted ‘Gang of Four’ led by the legendary Arthur Ryan, who over several decades transformed Penneys into one of the fastest-growing volume retailers in Europe.
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More than 450 delegates and business leaders are expected to attend the conference, which is open to women and men as well as IoD non-members. The 2019 event attracted a record number of male attendees, which the organisation is hoping to top this time round.
Kirsty McManus, IoD NI’s National Director, commented: “Since it was established in 2008, the Women’s Leadership Conference has become one of the most significant annual events on the business calendar.
“For 2020, we’ve taken the theme ‘Leading the Way’ and that’s exactly what our speakers are doing. We very much look forward to hearing their stories of success and are sure the keynote sessions will be engaging and thought provoking in equal measure.”
National Director Kirsty McManus, left, joins Lisa McLaughlin of Herbert Smith Freehills to roll out the red carpet.
The conference programme also features panel sessions with speakers including Dame Rotha Johnston, Chair of Northern Ireland Screen and Sinead Rocks, Regions & Nations Managing Director at Channel 4.
The 4k Pitch competition, which provides entrepreneurs with a chance to win funding for their start-up business, will also return.
Lisa McLaughlin, Director of Herbert Smith Freehills' Alternative Legal Services business across Belfast, London and Johannesburg added:
Herbert Smith Freehills is the event’s headline sponsor.
Associate sponsors include Barclays, The Open University, Translink, NIE Networks, Investec, SONI, and KPMG.
The IoD is a non-party political organisation claiming to represent the views of around 30,000 individual business leaders in the UK with over 950 members in Northern Ireland. Members are drawn from the private, public and voluntary sectors.
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For further details about the conference and to book a place, visit www.iod.com/ni
