Helen O’Rourke is the CEO of the Ladies Gaelic Football Association. It is a role she has held since 1997 making her the longest-serving CEO in Irish Sport.

She has led the sport to a position where it is now providing opportunities for over 200,000 players in more than 1,000 clubs up and down the country and in increasing numbers overseas.

She is a member of the Gaelic Games Integration Group chaired by former President Mary McAleese and also has a seat on the Management Committee of the GAA.

Managing the challenges of integration at every level of the Association will be the biggest challenge of the next year, one in which the Ladies Gaelic Football Association will celebrate its 50th Anniversary.

In this year’s Annual Report, she wrote that this needs to be “An Association which will be built on the
principle of equality and respect where we can all thrive. It is a complex matter and won’t be easy, it is important that we are afforded time and space to get the structure of this One Association right as there can be no going back.”

The long-term relationships the sport has built with headline commercial partners Lidl, TG4, Sports Direct, AIG, and others is a testament to a sport that is well-managed and understands its appeal at a number of different levels.

O’Rourke came up through the volunteer ranks after playing and then helping to create the first Dublin County Board.

She became President of the LGFA in the 1990s and when the decision was taken to appoint the first CEO in 1997 she left her primary school teaching job in Rathcoole County Dublin to embark on one of the most influential roles in Irish sports administration.

*******

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.