Anne O’Leary has been appointed CEO of Vodafone Ireland to replace the outgoing CEO Jeroen Hoencamp, who is taking up the role of executive director of Cable & Wireless Worldwide and enterprise director of Vodafone UK.
The appointment not only represents the first appointment of a female executive to lead the company since Teresa Elder held the role in 2006, it actually represents the first appointment of a native Irish CEO to lead the mobile operator since it came to Ireland with the acquisition of Eircell a decade ago.
O’Leary joined Vodafone Ireland from BT Ireland in 2008 as enterprise director. In this role, she spearheaded the expansion of the company’s product offering to Irish businesses and has overseen its direction as a total communications provider of mobile and fixed-line services.
In recent months, Vodafone Ireland successfully bid for one of the licences to deploy 4G infrastructure in Ireland. Vodafone, which paid €160.8m up front with €119.7m following up to 2030, acquired by far the largest portion of the spectrum available.
O’Leary is an active member of several business industry groups, and was recently re-elected to the board of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce and serves on the board of University College Cork.
She also served on the Government SME management development council of Ireland and has previously chaired an All-Ireland work group on behalf of the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.
O’Leary began her career in telecommunications with Esat in Cork. She then became manager of BT’s Global Service business and prior to joining Vodafone she assumed the role of managing director of BT’s SME Business in Ireland.
A Cork native, she studied marketing at CIT, and strategy and leadership at London Business School and enjoys competing in triathlons.
