Meet the team

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After the designs have been approved, work can start on the ground. This includes everything from readying existing infrastructure to laying fibre.

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NBI’s detailed design process covers infrastructure, power and footprint required, drawings, openeir works, Local Authority requirements and revised cost analysis.

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Physical surveys are required to examine the existing pole and duct network for inclusion in the design.

David McCourt

Chairman

David McCourt is the Chairman of National Broadband Ireland and Chairman and CEO of Granahan McCourt Capital, the worldwide investors in technology, media and telecommunications. The Economist describes him as processing “impeccable credentials as a telecoms revolutionary”.

McCourt has held senior roles as CEO, President or board member at some of the world’s biggest telecom network operators, including Level 3 Communications, MFS Communications, Corporate Communications Network, MCI WorldCom as well as well-respected regulated operator, Commonwealth Telephone Enterprises.

Science Foundation Ireland awarded McCourt with its prestigious ‘St. Patrick’s Day Science Medal’, celebrating his significant contribution to technology and innovation across academia, research and industry. The White House also presented McCourt with its first-ever C-flag award recognising extraordinary accomplishments by private sector businesses.

W. David Scott is the Chairman of Tetrad Corp, a multinational conglomerate & privately owned holding company with investment interests in Energy, Agricultural, Telecommunication, Banking & Real Estate segments. He has served on several public boards including MFA, Berkshire Energy, Home Services, Inc. and IRET. In addition to serving on several private boards, he has been involved in numerous civic organizations within his local community.

Aidan is a former international rugby player and current transformation consultant in innovation, leadership, neuroscience, culture & digital infrastructure, having set up and developed the digital infrastructure for Communicorp Media. He is a keynote speaker, author of “Undisruptable” and host of the Innovation Show. Aidan developed and delivers modules for Trinity Business School in Emerging Trends and Technologies and Transformation Management for Business and Life. Aidan brings a fresh focus to sustainability and identifying opportunities in enterprise risk management.

Paul Haran is the former Secretary General of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Haran has served as a Director of the Bank of Ireland, as a member of the board of Glanbia and the Mater Private Hospital. He has also chaired the Irish Government’s Working Group on Legal Costs, and is a member of the Forum of the ESRI, a Council member of the IMI (Irish Management Institute), chair of Forfas Taxation Advisory Committee, a trustee of the Millennium Trust and a member of the board of the UCD Michael Smurfit School of Business.

Ms. Bernie Gray is a management consultant and executive coach. She is an accountant and formerly held a number of senior management positions in Telecom Eireann, and was latterly HR Director. She is currently Chair of Coillte plc, and a member of the Accountability Board of the Civil Service. She has held a number of non– executive roles including former Chairperson of Eirgrid plc, and member of DCU Governing Authority, Irish Payment Services Organisation, Public Appointments Service and Telecom Eireann (now eircom).

Don McAuley serves on the Global Infrastructure team at Twitch, looking after the EMEA region. He has over 25 years’ experience of the telecoms industry, in the equipment vendor and carrier businesses, from both sales and procurement sides of large infrastructure projects.
McAuley’s previous roles have included heading up sales engineering and infrastructure products. He served as the VP of Global Sales for Interoute (now EXA Infrastructure) and played a key role in the rollout of the UK’s regional dark fibre.

Mike Adams is the former Chief Operations Officer and Chief Customer Officer for Rogers Communications, the largest facilities-based cable and wireless carrier in Canada with over 9M wireless customers and over 2M broadband internet customers. In his distinguished career, he has managed an employee base of over 10,000 people internally and over 11,000 third party contractors.

Hamid Akhavan is a Partner at Twin Point Capital, a growth oriented private equity firm based in New York, NY and Palo Alto, CA.

He was previously a Partner at Long Arc Capital, a private equity firm specialising in disruptive technology investments. He has also served as a Principal at Telecom Ventures LLC, an investment firm with a dedicated portfolio for telecommunications and related information technologies. Akhavan served as Chief Executive Officer of Unify Inc. (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications) and held the roles of Chief Operating Officer of Deutsche Telecom and Chief Executive Officer of T-Mobile International.

Musa Sönmez shares primary responsibility for managing Oak Hill Advisor’s (OHA) European operations, as well as for portfolio management of OHA’s European investments. He serves on the board of a number of OHA’s portfolio companies. Musa previously worked for Strategic Value Partners (SVP) where he focused on European investments. Prior to this, he worked at Lehman Brothers’ European Leveraged Finance Group in London and Lazard’s M&A advisory business in Germany.

Mairead Meyer

Director of Design and Deployment

Mairead is responsible for the Design and Deployment of the network. This encompasses all network activities from Survey, Design, Eir make ready coordination and network build for both the overhead and underground network. The role involves partner and stakeholder management.

Prior to joining NBI Mairead was the MD of Openreach in Northern Ireland where she led an end to end business responsible for all activities including the Design, Deployment and in life provision and repair activities in Northern Ireland. Mairead spearheaded the Openreach Northern Ireland teams commercial investment in Fibre Broadband and during her time moved Northern Ireland from lagging behind in broadband coverage to being the leading fibre to the premise region across the UK and Ireland with over 70% coverage. Mairead held various roles within BT across the UK and Ireland across Networks, IT and Customer Solutions leading teams of 1000 plus people across diverse geographies and skillsets.

Mairead has played a very active role in Northern Ireland in STEM activities in Northern Ireland promoting apprenticeships and encouraging females into STEM careers. Mairead sat on the board of Business in the Community in Northern Ireland for the last 5 years. She is also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

Mairead holds a 1^st class Masters in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Queen’s University, Belfast as well as a postgraduate Diploma in Business Improvement from the University of Jordanstown. Mairead is a certified Prince 2 practitioner.

Mike Adams

Project Advisor

Mike previously worked as Chief Operations Officer and Chief Customer Officer for Rogers Communications, the largest facilities-based cable and wireless carrier in Canada with over 9M wireless customers and over 2M broadband internet customers. In his distinguished career, he has managed an employee base of over 10,000 people internally and over 11,000 third party contractors.

David C. McCourt

Chairman

David McCourt is the Chairman of National Broadband Ireland and over the past 30 years, he has been widely known as a transformational force in the technology, media and telecoms industries. Described by The Economist as possessing impeccable credentials as a telecom revolutionary, he has founded or bought over 20 TMT companies in nine countries. He is a best-selling author and Emmy award-winning producer.

David has held senior roles as CEO, President or board member at some of the worlds biggest telecom network operators, including Level 3 Communications, MFS Communications, Corporate Communications Network, MCI WorldCom as well as well-respected regulated operator, Commonwealth Telephone Enterprises.

Throughout his career, David has received global accolades. The White House presented him with its first-ever award recognising extraordinary accomplishments by private sector businesses and he was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young LLP, Harvard Business School and Georgetown University. The American-Irish Historical Society presented David with its gold medal, an award previously bestowed on Ronald Reagan, Mary Higgins Clark and Bono. He was awarded The Science Foundation Ireland medal for outstanding contribution to technology and innovation.

Peter Hendrick

Chief Executive Officer

Peter Hendrick is the CEO of NBI, taking charge of one of the most ambitious telecoms projects in the world, ending the digital divide in Ireland.

Having worked on the project since 2015, Peter successfully led NBI through the competitive bid for the National Broadband Plan as the Managing Bid Director, heading up a team of some of the best and brightest minds in telecoms.

Peter holds 20 years of telecom, engineering, sales & executive experience and has held senior roles in Siemens and enet. In 2006, he co-founded AirSpeed Telecom, serving as the company’s Chief Operations Officer until 2015, helping build it into a national telecoms business focused on delivering managed telecommunication services to both retail and wholesale customers across Ireland.

Following Granahan McCourt’s acquisition of AirSpeed Telecom in 2014, Peter led the integration of the company with enet Wholesale networks.

Peter has received a number of industry awards during his career, including a top ten placing in the Deloitte Fast 50 Technology Awards and the Irish Times Tech 50.

He holds an honours degree in Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications and Electronics from Dublin Institute of Technology and has continued to support the institute in the role of external examiner covering both electronic and electrical engineering disciplines.

Joe Lavin

Chief Commercial Officer

Joe Lavin is the Chief Commercial Officer of NBI, responsible for directing business development, account management and product management functions.

Joe joined NBI in 2017, having led the development of commercial wholesale services for the eircom Group.

For over 25 years, he has been at the forefront of developments within the telecoms industry in Ireland and the UK. He spent over five years as Head of Commercial Products and Services at openeir growing their commercial product portfolio revenue five fold during that time. Joe also chaired openeir’s product development council.

Prior to joining eir, Joe held senior commercial roles in a number of telecom organisations including Magnet Networks, Energis and Smart Telecom. As Head of Product and Marketing at Magnet, Joe led the development and rollout of award-winning Internet and Fibre-to-the-Home technologies. He was instrumental in Smart Telecoms decision to utilise the newly developed Government MAN infrastructure in 2004 and helped many Wireless ISPs in Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford to harness the new infrastructure to deploy wireless alternatives to dial up and DSL internet access.

Joe holds both a BSc in Information Systems and an MBA from Trinity College Dublin.

Geoff Shakespeare

Chief Operations Officer

Geoff Shakespeare is the Chief Operating Officer of NBI, responsible for the delivery and operations of the National Broadband Plan solution being built by NBI.

Geoff first joined NBI as an advisor in 2017, with extensive experience planning, implementing and supporting telecoms networks and IT infrastructure in Ireland, the US, the UK and Sweden.

With over 25 years of Fixed, Mobile & IT experience in the telecoms industry, Geoff has held senior technical and operations roles at Ericsson, and spent ten years at Eircom.

As the Managing Director of Technology Evolution & Development at Eircom Group, Geoff was responsible for building the company’s 3G/4G, FTTC/FTTH, IPTV Networks and associated BSS/OSS platforms. He also led the transformation of the groups network and IT infrastructure to deliver Fibre Broadband, TV and 4G services nationally.Geoff has also worked as the primary technology interface to the Department of Communications and Comreg. He led the technology negotiation team with DG Comp (EU Competition Authority) during the successful negotiation of the remedy which allowed 3Ireland to acquire O2.

Geoff is a Chartered Engineer and holds an Honours Degree in Electronic Engineering from University College, Dublin (UCD) and is a member of the Institute of Engineers Ireland.

Tara Collins

Chief Marketing Officer

Tara Collins is the Chief Marketing Officer of NBI, responsible for directing the brand and communications strategy, stakeholder engagement and demand stimulation.

Tara joined NBI in 2020 with a wealth of experience across marketing, communications, PR, business development, and corporate relations, built up over a career of more than 20 years in the public and private sectors.

Recognised by Business & Finance Media Group as one of the top 100 marketing experts working in Ireland today, Tara has held senior roles at Ryanair, Seniors Money International, Smurfit Business School, Hewlett Packard and University College Dublin. Tara’s global experience has seen her live and work in the USA, UK, Europe, Australia and Asia.

Tara sits on the Board of BizWorld Ireland, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes entrepreneurship skills for young people and is a diversity champion for the Womens Executive Network (WXN). She also volunteers for Harvard Business Schools virtual learning groups.

Tara holds a Bachelors Degree from the Technological University Dublin, a Professional Diploma in Business & Executive Coaching from the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and is also a Harvard Business School Alumna.

Barry Kelly

Chief Financial Officer

Barry Kelly is the Chief Financial Officer of NBI, responsible for all aspects of finance, accounting, control, reporting and investor relations.

Barry joined NBI in 2020 with over 25 years of finance and commercial experience ranging from small entrepreneurial businesses and start-ups to publicly quoted multi-nationals and private equity concerns.

His previous roles include serving as the M&A Director in Valeo Foods and Senior Director of Transaction Services at KPMG Ireland.

Barry is a Fellow of Chartered Accountancy Ireland.

Jenny Fisher

Chief Legal Officer

Jenny Fisher is the Chief Legal Officer of NBI, responsible for overseeing all legal and regulatory affairs, with a particular focus on corporate governance and ensuring compliance with the company’s obligations to the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment.

Jenny joined NBI in 2020 with 20 years of legal experience, advising on complex projects in highly scrutinised industries in both the semi-state and private sectors. She holds particular experience in advisory and leadership roles in infrastructure (water, roads, education, waste) and regulated industries.

Having been a partner in one of Ireland’s preeminent law firms for 5 years, Jenny then led the legal team in Irish Water from its inception, before spending 4 years as Head of Corporate, Legal & Regulatory Affairs at the National Lottery.

Jenny sits on the audit and risk committee for Self Help Africa, a leading international development charity that is dedicated to ending hunger and poverty in rural Africa.

Jenny holds a Bachelor of Laws and is a practising solicitor in Ireland as well as being admitted to the roll in England & Wales and Northern Ireland.

Daragh O’Mahony

Chief People Officer

Daragh is responsible for leading NBI’s Human Resources and Facilities teams ensuring that the business has the best talent and environment to support and deliver on the National Broadband Plan.

Daragh joined NBI in 2021 having worked in a range of senior HR roles over the last 20 years across a range of industries including telecoms, insurance, financial services, airport operations and retail. These roles have been in a mixture of publicly quoted companies and commercial semi-state organisations. His broad experience includes supporting new country set ups, engaging in mergers & acquisitions and supporting Boards and RemCo’s on strategic people projects. Daragh’s global experience has seen him work across numerous geographies from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Daragh holds a Bachelors degree in Management & Information Systems and a Masters Degree in Human Resource Strategy from Dublin City University.

TJ Malone

Chief Executive Officer

T.J. Malone is the Chief Executive Officer of National Broadband Ireland Deployment, responsible for the design and build of NBIs nationwide network infrastructure, the biggest investment in rural Ireland since rural electrification.

T.J. joined NBI Deployment in 2019 and has 25 years of experience in telecommunications. He was previously the CEO of Actavo Network & In-Home and General Manager for Public Access at Esat Telecom.

In these roles, T.J. led the design, procurement and construction of some of the largest fibre network deployments worldwide including North America, the Caribbean, the UK and Ireland, responsible for workforces of over 3,500 personnel.

He was also a founding shareholder and director in Irelands first independent ATM provider, Easycash Ltd., until it was acquired by the Royal Bank of Scotland. He has been listed in Ireland’s Business & Finance top 100 CEO’s for four consecutive years.

Outside of work, T.J. serves as Chairman at Club Kildare (Kildare GAA Supports Club) having represented Kildare GAA football and hurling at all underage levels.

T.J. attended Waterford Institute of Technology graduating from the Institute of Chartered Secretaries.

Donal Hanrahan

Chief Operations Officer

Donal Hanrahan is a senior executive with over 25 years of telecoms and software leadership experience, with a key focus on founding, building, growing and improving companies across the telecoms and software industries.

Previously Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Irish-based Fibre-To-The-Home telco start-up, Magnet Networks, as well as General Manager of BGE’s Aurora Telecom Open Access Fibre Network, Donal was part of the management team that grew Magnet’s revenue to €12M over five years through organic growth and acquisition. Donal also developed a Bord Gais subsidiary into Ireland’s first carrier-neutral dark fibre provider.

Entrepreneurial minded, Donal also co-founded Elivar, a sports nutrition company and established scalable production, operations, distribution & ecommerce infrastructure. He is also a non-executive director of a regulatory compliance and training consultancy

Donal has served as Programme Director at NBI since September 2016.

Pat O’Toole

Technical Director of Milestone Achievements

Pat O’ Toole is the Network Deployment Director of NBID, with responsibility for the design and build of the Access Network solution for the National Broadband Plan.

Pat has served as the Technical Lead at NBI since December 2015, with a proven track record in managing organisational change and development having spent 25 years at Director and General Manager level in the Telecommunications Industry.

With more than 45 years of experience in the telecoms and Fibre-to-the-Home industry, Pat has led the plan, design and build functions at the incumbent operator of Ireland’s Access Network, overseeing a staff of 2,000 people across in-house and contractor activities.

In a variety of roles at eircom, including Head of Division Fixed Asset Network Build, General Manager of Service Assurance and Head of Business Planning and Support Systems, Pat had overall responsibility for the company’s installation and renewal of its copper and fibre network in the Republic of Ireland.

Pat enjoys amateur theatre activities and is a key figure on the National Drama Festival Circuit. He also remains involved at community and Parish level.

He gained his first job in industry directly from secondary school.

Greg Walsh

Finance Director

Greg Walsh is the Finance Director of NBI Deployment, responsible for the financial planning and budgeting process, including project cost control and reporting.

Greg joined NBI Deployment in 2020 and has over 12 years of experience in finance having held a variety of leadership roles across finance deployment and operations.

With extensive knowledge of the telecommunications sector, Greg has worked as Senior Project Analyst of commercial technology at Vodafone.

Prior to this, Greg was an Executive Manager at NBN Australia, and worked as an auditor at the Audit Office of New South Wales. He initially qualified through Ernst & Young as a Chartered Accountant.

Greg holds a BSc in Business Management (Accounting) from Technological University Dublin and is a qualified Chartered Accountant as well as a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland.

Grace Kelly

Health, Safety, Quality and Environmental (HSQE) Director

Grace is the HSQE Director of NBI, responsible for leading the Health and Safety, Quality and Environmental functions.

Grace joined NBI in 2020 and has 15 years of experience in managing and leading quality and EHS functions for medium to large organisations internationally. Her projects include a variety of sectors, including telecoms, utilities, construction and pharmaceutical.

She most recently held the senior role as Divisional SHEQ Director at Actavo, overseeing the Safety, Health, Environmental and Quality function for Actavo Network & In-Home. In this role, she worked on large fibre rollouts across multiple territories for major clients. She has also held senior EHS positions at Telefonica O2 and Helsinn Group.

Grace is an Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) member and previously held the position of Vice-Chair of the IOSH East Branch within Ireland. She also works as a mentor, supporting junior and graduate professionals who are building and shaping their careers in the field.

Holding a Bachelors’ Science Degree from Sligo IT, Grace more recently completed an Advanced Diploma in Project Management with Dublin Business School.

About Us

Meet the team

David McCourt

CHAIRMAN

Peter Hendrick

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Joe Lavin

CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER

Geoff Shakespeare

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

Tara Collins

CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER

Barry Kelly

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER

Jenny Fisher

CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER

Daragh O’Mahony

CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER

Deployment Executive Team (Design and Construction)

TJ Malone

CHIEF EXECUTIVEOFFICER

Donal Hanrahan

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

Greg Walsh

FINANCE DIRECTOR

Pat O’Toole

Technical Director of Milestone Achievements

Grace Kelly

HEALTH, SAFETY, QUALITY AND ENVIROMENTAL (HSQE) DIRECTOR

Mairead Meyer

DIRECTOR OF DESIGN AND DEPLOYMENT

Mike Adams

PROJECT ADVISOR

Board of Directors

David McCourt

Mike Adams

Hamid Akhavan

Bernie Gray

Paul Haran

Aidan McCullen

Don McAuley

W. David Scott

Musa Soenmez

CHIEF FINANCIAL
OFFICER

CHIEF LEGAL
OFFICER

CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER

CHIEF OPERATIONS
OFFICER