Kara is Ibec’s strategic advisor and support on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, labour market and skills for member organisations across multiple sectors.  She has been with Ibec since 2008 and her role includes strategy development and implementation, public and regulatory policy, business representation and stakeholder engagement.

In addition to lobbying and developing policy positions at a national and European level, Kara represents business at stakeholder forums across a breadth of policy areas from gender pay gap reporting, to human rights, labour market activation and immigration.

Kara is an organisational psychologist and formerly HR manager in industry with lecturing experience at undergraduate, postgraduate and executive level.  In addition to her Ibec role, Kara is the Chair of the Employment Working Group of Business Europe, represents Irish business on the Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Committee of Business at the OECD (BIAC), a member of the External Group of Experts of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU), a member of the Labour Market Advisory Council and Board member of the Open Doors Initiative.

As a Fine Gael member of the European Parliament for Midlands North-West since 2019, Maria sits on the EMPL, CULT and LIBE Committees as a member of the EPP.

Maria is dedicated to highlighting the cross-sectional impacts of mental health throughout her policy work. Mental health is at the centre of all her conversations and she consistently engages with EU citizens on the impact of mental health on their everyday lives. She always takes stances on policy and legislation that align with her values of inclusion, equality, and respect, even if this entails some difficult conversations within the Parliament.

Siobhan is a dynamic, experienced and highly qualified professional. Operating as a trusted leader, Siobhan led Diversity & Inclusion from January 2019, developing AIB’s Diversity & Inclusion strategy to further evolve mindsets into breaking down unconscious biases, raising awareness, and delivering supportive initiatives across AIB.

Through her subsequent secondment role with Open Doors Initiative, Siobhan provided opportunities to some of the marginalized members of our society: refugees, asylum seekers, non-native English speakers, Young people under 25 with educational barriers, and People with a disability.

Siobhan is now Senior Director of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Element Materials Technology and has been working in this role since January 2022.

Gavin is D&I Inclusion Manager at AXA Ireland, having previously held D&I roles at Irish Life, LinkedIn, and Business in the Community Ireland. Over his career he has established ground-breaking programmes to reduce barriers to employment for family carers, hard to reach youth, persons with disabilities, and refugees.

He is an active and respected contributor to the wider corporate D&I landscape sitting on industry working groups such as the Insurance Ireland D&I Taskforce and the IBEC D&I forum. As a member of the LGBTQ+ and Irish Traveller communities, he regularly contributes to discussions on driving inclusion forward for minority groups.

In his spare time, he is a dedicated community advocate and supporter in his roles as Chairperson of the National LGBT Federation, Gay Community New (GCN) and Co-founder of the Traveller Graduate Network. Gavin’s passion lies in driving meaningful, lasting change in the workplace and wider society.

Shane has been working in the area of HR and Employee Relations for 13 years, primarily in Tech and Telecomms. A winner of the 2020 Irish HR Champion Awards, and a finalist in the UK Diversity Champion awards; Shane’s primary interest in the inclusion space is pushing organisations of all sizes to use their platforms to build inclusive spaces for all and to call people into the conversation around differences and not push them out.

Shane is a proud board member of the LGBTQ+ charity, Shout Out and also sits on the board of the CIPD South Eastern chapter in Ireland.

Stephen Cluskey is an internationally certified accessibility expert, an award-winning tech entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of the global leading standard for accessibility, Mobility Mojo.

Stephen is considered a thought leader in diversity, inclusion and accessibility. His company’s software has been implemented in some of the most famous organisations on the planet and global leaders including Sir Richard Branson have publicly spoken about Stephen and his work.

Having suffered a catastrophic spinal cord injury at the age of just 18, which left Stephen paralysed from the neck down, he supports businesses to think differently about diversity, inclusion and accessibility.