Michelle Carpenter is the CEO of Rowing Ireland. Appointed to the role in May 2018 she has navigated the challenging times of Covid and overseen high levels of success for the sport at Olympic, World and European Championship level.

In 2017 she was selected by World Rowing to be a participant on the IOC Women in Leadership forum and in 2020 she was appointed to the Executive Committee of the Olympic Federation of Ireland.

She was the driving force behind the creation of the successful Get Going Get Rowing campaign which has seen tens of thousands of people from school all the way to workplaces get the experience of rowing on a machine, leading many to get involved on the water as well.

Originally from Limerick, she was one of the first registered female rowing members of Shannon Rowing Club, rowing in their first winning women’s championship crew of 1988. She subsequently rowed at Junior and U23 level for Ireland.

Before becoming involved in the world of sports administration Carpenter was part of the team that launched the Euro currency while working at the European Central bank in Frankfurt.

Michelle Carpenter will be one of our guest speakers at the Annual Sport for Business Women in Sport Conference in Dublin on November 24th.

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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.