Basketball Ireland has announced the appointment of Nathaniel Cope as its new Media and Communications Manager, and Jenny Kelly as Community Relations Manager and Women in Sport Lead.
Both of the new appointments will take effect in May and are part of a refresh following the departure of Mary McGuire for a role in Wilson Hartnell.
Cope comes to Basketball Ireland with almost 20 years experience in the Irish and UK media, encompassing radio, television, print and online.
He has previously been a sports presenter, reporter and producer for ITV Wales, TV3, SNTV, Premier League Productions, Associated Press, RugbyPass.com and most recently with Virgin Media.
He has covered a wide range of major global sporting events during his career, including soccer and rugby World Cups and the Olympics.
He holds a degree in Communications, Culture and Media from Coventry University, as well as a Postgraduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism from Cardiff University.
“I am hugely excited to begin a new chapter with Basketball Ireland,” he said. “There is huge growth potential for the game in Ireland and working with the team, I want to bring it to more prominence in the sporting landscape, both nationally and locally.”
“These are challenging times for sport with COVID-19 putting the brakes on everything, but I look forward to helping relaunch basketball in Ireland once we can get the game up and running again.”
Also joining Basketball Ireland as Community Relations Manager and Women in Sport lead is Jenny Kelly. Kelly previously worked for five years with Tenao and on an array of high-profile sponsorships including those of Allianz, Vhi, Canterbury, EirGrid, eir sport and SPAR.
She also established herself as an emerging leader within the sport and sponsorship industry, having been recognised as one of the PwC Sport for Business 30 Under 30 Young leaders in 2018.
She graduated from college with a Business and Management Degree and has since completed diplomas in Public Relations and the School of Radio diploma with Today FM.
Kelly has a passion for all sports and is looking forward to the next exciting chapter of her career working with Basketball Ireland where she will utilise her skillset to increase the awareness of Basketball in Ireland.
“The appointments of Nathaniel and Jenny are a real statement of intent by Basketball Ireland that we will relaunch activity very positively when current restrictions are lifted,” said CEO Bernard O’Byrne.
“We aim to drive our sport on to increasingly higher levels of profile and recognition. We warmly welcome them both to our team and look forward to very positive contributions from them.”
Kelly will begin her role on May 5th, with Cope starting on May 19th.
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