RDJ hosted a 30% Club Ireland event, Shaping Tomorrow's Leadership: AI, Inclusion and Gender Balance, at its Cork office at 85 South Mall, bringing together senior business leaders, 30% Club members and RDJ clients to examine the progress being made on gender balance and the practical actions organisations can take to build stronger, more inclusive leadership pipelines.
The event opened with a keynote from Martyn Rosney, Senior Partner at Reputation Inc and member of the 30% Club Ireland Steering Committee, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Elizabeth Sheehan, Country Executive of 30% Club Ireland, featuring Dr Hazel Murray, Chair of Cybersecurity at MTU; Trayc Keevans, Global Foreign Direct Investment Director at Morgan McKinley; Gillian Keating, RDJ Partner and co-founder of I WISH; and Gavin Hennessy, Diversity & Inclusion Lead at AXA Ireland.
Martyn Rosney's Keynote Address: Highlights
1. The Courage Dividend
Greater gender balance delivers measurable organisational benefits. Martyn highlighted that 66% of organisations with more gender-balanced leadership report improved leadership and decision quality, 59% report stronger talent attraction and retention, and 54% report higher employee engagement. The message was clear: gender balance is not simply a representation issue, it can contribute to better decision-making, stronger talent pipelines and greater alignment between what organisations promise and what employees actually experience.
2. A seat at the table is not the same as a say at the table
Women now hold 42% of ISEQ 20 board seats and 32% of senior executive roles, but only 19% of CEO and 18% of Chair positions. While representation at senior levels has improved, the figures point to a continuing challenge around progression. The focus therefore needs to shift from simply getting more women into leadership to understanding where and why talented women are being lost along the way?
3. Ambition is not the problem
While 45% of leaders surveyed observe women declining leadership opportunities more frequently than men, research related to high-performing women points to a more complex picture. Women continue to express ambition for challenge, impact and influence, but progression becomes less attractive when senior roles are associated with constant availability, inflexibility, care trade-offs and unsustainable workloads. The question, therefore, is not simply whether women want to lead, but whether organisations are designing leadership roles that people can realistically aspire to and sustain.
4. Leadership needs to reflect how people live and work today
With four generations now in the workforce, organisations need to recognise that self-care, childcare and eldercare can affect employees throughout their careers. 50% of Gen Z prioritise work-life balance over salary, while 42% of working parents have considered leaving an organisation where family support was inadequate and 37% of employees with caring responsibilities believe those responsibilities are incompatible with senior roles.
5. AI could become the next leadership gap
AI is changing how work gets done and, with it, the skills, experience and visibility that will shape the next generation of leaders. Only 18% of women currently use advanced digital skills at work compared with 44% of men. If left unaddressed, today's digital skills gap risks becoming tomorrow's leadership gap.
6. Progress requires deliberate action
Leadership pipelines are shaped by who receives opportunity, visibility, advocacy and the vital experience needed to progress. Small decisions around who gets sponsored, who achieves stretch assignments and who is generally noticed can compound over the course of a career. While 84% of leaders believe gender balance matters to organisational resilience and competitiveness, 63% cite leadership courage as necessary to advance gender balance.
Martyn noted in his closing message that competitiveness will increasingly depend on an organisations' ability to attract, develop and retain the widest possible pool of talent as the demand for skills evolves, AI reshapes work and people's needs change throughout their careers.
Panel Discussion: Key Takeaways
Elizabeth Sheehan, Country Executive of the 30% Club, was joined by Gillian Keating, RDJ Partner and co-founder of I WISH; Trayc Keevan, Global Foreign Direct Investment Director at Morgan McKinley; Dr Hazel Murray, Chair of Cybersecurity at MTU; and Gavin Hennessy, Diversity & Inclusion Lead at AXA Ireland, to explore how organisations can drive female representation in leadership through practical interventions.
1. Gender balance matters in technology and AI
Dr Hazel Murray highlighted the continued underrepresentation of women in AI and cybersecurity, with women representing approximately 22% of those working in the cybersecurity field. She noted that research shows gender-balanced cybersecurity teams are 80% less likely to suffer a cyber breach. Women are, however, more often found in compliance roles than on core cybersecurity or technical implementation teams.
As AI increasingly shapes business and society, ensuring diverse perspectives are represented in the cybersecurity and analogous teams developing and implementing these technologies will become increasingly important.
2. Sponsorship needs to complement mentorship
Trayc Keevans highlighted the importance of male allyship and advocating for women when they are not in the room. Mentorship continues to play an important role, but sponsorship offers something different: active advocacy, access to influential networks and opportunities to take on visible assignments. Trayc also stressed the importance of visible role models and the value both mentors and mentees can gain from these relationships.
3. Build belonging before the talent pipeline narrows
Drawing on her work with I WISH, Gillian Keating explained that when girls are surveyed at around 12 years old, 96% express confidence in their ability to undertake a career in STEM. By age 15–16, however, over 64% cite inequality in STEM roles as a barrier and 62% point to a lack of female role models.
Gillian highlighted the importance of building belonging, community and access for young women in STEM, noting that engineering and construction studies remain minimally available in all girls' schools. While the proportion of women among STEM undergraduates is slowly rising, female representation within senior AI roles remains as low as 12–14% – a concern given that AI having been developed predominantly by men risks encoding that imbalance into the technology itself. Progress has been made, but the need for change is more urgent than ever.
4. Measure where talent is being lost
Gavin Hennessy encouraged organisations to look beyond headline representation figures and examine recruitment, promotion and bonus data across the entire organisation to bridge the gap between good intentions and actual implementation.
Creating a clear gender dashboard can help identify where disparities emerge and allow organisations to measure whether interventions are required and once implemented, if they make a difference. He also highlighted practical measures including targeted training, mentoring, visible role models and supportive workplace policies.
5. Turn awareness into action
One of the clearest messages from the panel was the importance of moving beyond conversation to practical action.
Gavin summarised this through his "Triple A" framework: Awareness, Action and Allies, recommending that organisations identify a specific action and focus on delivering it rather than allowing discussion to become an end in itself.
Gillian reinforced the importance of language, visible organisational values and recognising that the next generation of talent is watching what businesses do today: "If we whisper today what we said loudly yesterday, we have lost our values."
View photos from the event here.