I recently read an article by Jennifer O’Connell in the Irish Times mentioning the lack of older female role models. The article was funny and incisive and I got it, but it also got me thinking about the EY Entrepreneur of the Year awards which I attended a couple of months ago. There were lots of worthy winners and you can’t question giving the top award to Brendan Mooney of Kainos. But in all the reporting of the event afterwards, I saw very little about an amazing woman who I wasn’t aware of previously who received the Special Award – Dr Susan McKenna-Lawlor.
She’s a diminutive woman but she totally lit up the stage with her presence when she went to receive her award. She struck me as someone who’s earned the right to say whatever she wants when she gets in front of an audience. She was witty and charming and managed to tease Enda Kenny about stumping up money for scientific research and for an Irish satellite.
She modestly said that she had sort of fallen into experimental physics by accident at UCD. I know that if I fell into experimental physics, I wouldn’t have clue how to climb back out. But she just went with it, all the way to leading international teams of scientists on the Giotto mission for the European Space Agency, and on the 1994 Soviet Mars mission and for the Rosetta spacecraft among many others. Oh, and she also set up a thriving space instrumentation company Space Technology Ireland Ltd with Dermot Desmond and she’s still the MD.
I just thought I’d namecheck her because she struck me as a real pioneer, as an Irish person and as a woman, and she had a quality about her that I immediately warmed to when I saw her on stage. A bit of a role model, in fact.
– Rachel Tubridy
