Aoife Clarke is the Director of Communications at the Irish Rugby Football Union

Clarke joined the IRFU from Lidl in February of this year, taking up her new role in the summer after returning from Maternity leave.

She had been Director of Communications for Lidl Ireland and Northern Ireland since 2013. She operated at Divisional Director level as part of the senior management team where she had responsibility for the group’s PR, Internal Communications, Events, Social Media, CSR and Public Affairs.

She was one of the speakers at our Women in Sport Conference at the Aviva Stadium in May 2022 and spoke eloquently about the positive impact the partnership between Lidl and Ladies Football had for both the sponsor and the sport.

Now her attention is on building on the support which the Irish Rugby teams has generated in recent years and telling the story of the sport.

See who else has been named on the list alongside Aoife Clarke by clicking on the image below.

 

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See who else has been included so far on the list for 2023

 

 

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.Â