Anne McCormack was appointed as the new CEO of Hockey Ireland in June of this year, taking up the role in September.

She was previously the Chief Operating Officer at Golf Ireland, where she was a key member of the team that created the unified organisation in 2021, transitioning the Golf Union of Ireland and Irish Ladies Golf Union from separate gender-based entities.

In this role she featured on last year’s Sport for Business / AIG 50 Women of Influence.

She brings a passion for sport, having played golf at an elite level representing Connaught and Ireland at underage levels, and was the driving force behind a number of major Golf initiatives including ‘Get into Golf’, ‘Golf4Girls4Life’ and ‘LevelPar’.

As a powerful advocate of inclusion and equality, she further bolsters Hockey Ireland’s already strong track record of gender representation at Board and Executive level roles.

It is a great time to be coming in to lead the sport with Olympic Qualifiers on the Horizon for next year and Ireland also set to host Division 2 of the European Indoor Hockey Championships at the University of Galway in February.

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This is the 11th edition of our Sport for Business listing of 50 Women of Influence in Irish Sport.

Read more about the list and nominate who you think should be a part of it in 2023.

We are proud to publish the list in partnership with AIG, an organisation that has pledged its commitment to equality in its partnerships with Gaelic Games, Tennis, Golf and more, for whom “Effort is Equal” and with whom we have ambitious plans to extend the reach of this annual celebration of the Women who are making a difference.

This year’s list will be drawn as before from the worlds of leadership, partnership, storytelling, and performance.

We began this journey in 2013 when challenged that we would never be able to produce a list of twenty Influential Women in Irish Sport. The 20 stretched to 30, then 40 and 50 and it still does not do justice to the talent that is out there.

This year once more, to keep things fresh we will step up again, raising the number of new entrants to at least 40 percent of fresh names from last year.

It will be the hardest part to have some names replaced but if it was too easy it would be of less value.

The list we will build over the coming weeks is a snapshot of those women who are making a mark on how sport is played, consumed, grown, and delivered.

They are part of making the role of women in sport unexceptional by being exceptional in what they do.