Suzanne Eade was appointed as the first female CEO of Horse Racing Ireland in September 2021.

She is the senior executive in a sport and an industry that was reported in a Deloitte survey this year to have an overall economic impact in Ireland of €2.46 Billion.

The sport she governs has bounced back well from Covid with many of the key indicators showing double-digit growth on where they were before the pandemic in 2019.

She faced a breakaway of five racecourses over media rights earlier this year but faced down the challenge and secured a long-term deal that continues to serve the whole of the sport in a key element of its funding.

A graduate in Economics from UCD and a qualified accountant Eade joined Horse Racing Ireland in 2015 as Finance Director, a similar role to that which she previously held at Boots Retail Ireland. She has also held senior roles in the multinational sector including with Gillette in Geneva and Procter and Gamble in Dublin.

She will be part of our CEO Forum at the Sport for Business Women in Sport Conference 2023.

 

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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.