The shortlist for the inaugural Female Futures Fund, which is organised by IAPI, has been published.
The six shortlisted are Ciara Markey, Mediaworks; Claire O’Brien, Omnicom Media Group; Eimear Fitzmaurice, JWT Folk; Eimear Fitzmaurice, The Public House; Jane Grey, Verve and Meabh Connellan, Dentsu Aegis.
IAPI received 26 submissions and the judging panel included Jill Walker, executive coach; Charley Stoney, CEO, IAPI; Charlotte Barker, IAPI board member and chair of its diversity & inclusion council; Grainne Wafer, global brand director, Diageo and Mark Doyle, CMO, AIB. Diageo is the sponsor of executive coaching bursary which will go to the two overall winners.
“The bursary is a real landmark in our journey to improving the gender balance. Our industry has started to address this at leadership level with 38% of executive roles now taken by females according to the 2019 IAPI Census Report. Coaching is so empowering for women, particularly those in male dominated roles, where confidence seems to be the key barrier to their career progression,” says Charley Stoney, CEO, IAPI.
“This bursary is aimed at identifying women with huge potential in the advertising industry. However, we do not simply wish to award the already high achievers. We would like to recognise those who simply may not know how good they are yet and are therefore unwittingly holding themselves back from achieving their career goals. The ideal is to find two women who truly need to be given the extra boost of confidence to excel and so would benefit the most from this bursary.”
The six shortlisted candidates will present remotely via video call to the judges next week with the winners being announced on Friday 1st May. The two selected candidates will be able to avail of the Female Futures Fund. The bursary will fund six coaching sessions for each candidate with Jill Walker between June-December 2020.
