From his living room to the boardroom: UCC student persuades top CEOs to attend leadership summit
Chief executives from some of the country’s best-known firms have been lined up by an enterprising 20-year-old UCC student to appear at a business leaders forum in April -- all organised from his home in Cork.
Defying the laws of event management by cold calling, persuading and cajoling from his home on College Road, Bantry native and second-year economics student at UCC, Barry O’Sullivan put together the lineup for the event at Clontarf Castle Hotel in Dublin on April 5.
Speakers include chief executives of Granahan McCourt Capital, David McCourt; Euronext Dublin’s Daryl Byrne; the Housing Agency’s John O’Connor; Leinster Rugby’s Michael Dawson, Dalata Hotel Group’s Pat McCann; and Michael O’Flynn of housing development firm O'Flynn Group.
“I want to create an annual event which would connect commercial leaders in Ireland, an event which would see global CEOs disseminate their insight, views and ideas to managing directors and executives in Ireland.
“I want to connect people with CEOs so that they can discuss issues that are happening in their business and in Ireland. I felt something like this wasn’t being done at this level and I set about to create it.
“I think an event like Executive Summit has the potential to be a continental gathering of executives and managing directors out of Dublin, as opposed to just a national one,” Mr O’Sullivan said.
He said he was hoping to secure some of the best-known women in business leadership over the coming weeks for the event.
“I am putting a lot of effort into trying to secure more female speakers for the event and I am very close to announcing news on this.
“I am very conscious of the need to ensure we have a good gender balance on the speaker panel and I am very hopeful that among the 12 speakers in total we will be able to secure some strong female speakers,” Mr O’Sullivan said.
He put the event together with money made working as an intern during the summer at Cork-headquartered software-as-a-service firm Teamwork.com, and part-time work during college working five nights a week in a Cork city restaurant.
The student said he is now looking to recruit sponsors for the event.
Deputy president of UCC, John O’Halloran said: “This is an excellent initiative and we urge people to support this summit. This is an opportunity to listen to new voices led by one of our undergraduate students, Barry O’Sullivan. Barry exemplifies what we are seeking to do through our curriculum reform at UCC – using our new academic strategy.”
