New roles: (top row) Tom Browne, Laura Behan, Dylan Morley; (bottom row) Gopal Ganeshan, Aidan O’Driscoll, Régis Schultz.
Here is a selection of people starting new roles with Royal London, Ballymaloe House, Fuzion Communications, OpenSky, Ornua and JD Sports Fashion.
Tom Browne
He has been appointed as a non-executive director with insurance firm Royal London Ireland, where he will help RLI to build on its mutual ethos. His prior roles include CEO at Aviva Life Ireland for three years; prior to that, he was CEO with Friends First for six years.
Tom has had a 40-year career in the domestic life assurance industry, primarily with Friends First, where he held senior actuarial and financial roles prior to becoming CEO in 2012. He has also held senior roles for Eagle Star and Irish Life. Tom is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries in Ireland (FSAI).
Laura Behan
Laura Behan has been appointed as general manager of country house, restaurant and catering school Ballymaloe House in East Cork. She was previously manager at the Montenotte Hotel in Cork. She was also previously operations manager at the Lyrath Hotel in Kilkenny. Laura brings a huge amount of expertise to Ballymaloe House, notably in organising tailor-made banqueting events.
As senior restaurants manager of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group in Turkey, she oversaw the running of 11 outlets to the highest standards, while also planning and managing gala dinners, weddings and VIP events. She holds a BSc in Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry from UCD.
Dylan Morley
He has recently joined PR firm Fuzion Communications in Cork as a junior account executive. In this role, he will provide assistance to the PR and communications account management team. A native of Cork, Dylan joins Fuzion having recently studied at Munster Technological University for an MA in Public Relations with New Media.
This course has provided him with research, planning, managerial and multimedia skills, so that he can display leadership and show capacity for innovation within the dynamic and fast evolving professional communications industry. Dylan is also a graduate of University College Cork, where he spent four years studying Government and Political Science.
Gopal Ganeshan
Gopal Ganeshan has been appointed as head of projects delivery with enterprise automation specialists OpenSky, within its digital services division which is seeing continued growth among public sector and large private clients for its automation, database management and cloud services.
Mr Ganeshan was previously software development project manager at OpenSky, and has more than 12 years’ experience in technical development projects and project management. He previously worked for Datavail, a database administration company in the US, as well as in other development and content creation roles. He holds an MBA and a degree in Information Technology, as well as certifications in AWS, CCP, ITIL and PMP.
Aidan O’Driscoll
Aidan O’Driscoll has been appointed as chair of the board of Irish dairy co-op Ornua. He replaces Denis Cregan after his three-year tenure. Aidan’s career spans 40 years in agri-food, economics and leadership. He was chair of the Commission on the Defence Forces, and secretary general of the Department of Justice.
His senior Department of Agriculture roles include secretary general (2015-18), assistant secretary general for finance, EU affairs, economics and climate change (2001-15), and chief economist (1995-2001). He has worked in Africa with Irish Aid and with UN group FAO. He was also chair of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS).
Régis Schultz
Régis Schultz has been appointed as CEO with JD Sports Fashion, retailer of sports, fashion and outdoor brands, replacing Kath Smith who is to resume her former role as senior independent director on the board. Régis joins from his role as president of retail with Al-Futtaim Group, the Dubai-based conglomerate, partner to leading automotive, retail, financial services, real estate and health firms.
He has also been CEO of major retail businesses, including food and fashion retailer Monoprix in France, where he launched a new digital strategy, signed a partnership with Amazon, concluded the first international partnership with Ocado and concluded the acquisition of an online shoes’ pure player.
