Our Advisory Panel

There is huge potential for Ireland to be a world-leader in remote working and for remote work to transform and revitalise rural communities. The Grow Remote Advisory Panel aims to sustain and build on the momentum of the remote work revolution to ensure the benefits of remote can be enjoyed by everyone, everywhere.

The Advisory Panel will advise Grow Remote as they work towards achieving their mission of making remote work local.

Members of the Advisory Panel includes leaders from some of Ireland’s most successful home-grown remote companies and thought leaders from the public and non-profit sectors.

Claire McHugh

Claire McHugh is CEO and Co-Founder of Axonista, a multi-award winning world-leader in video commerce technology. Axonista powers interactive video shopping experiences for global enterprises such as QVC, HSN, WaterBear and Oxfam. An advisor to Scale Ireland and Tech Ireland, Claire is recognised as one of Ireland’s leading entrepreneurs, having served on the European Innovation Council jury, and as lead entrepreneur with Going for Growth.

Shane Evans

Shane Evans is the CEO and co-founder at Zyte, who provide web data to the largest data-driven companies in the world. Zyte (formerly Scraping Hub) are a remote-first company with 190 staff. Shane has built remote teams and companies for almost 20 years and is passionate about the positive impact remote work can have.

Hélène Haughney

Hélène Haughney is the Chief Operations Officer at Nearform, responsible for service delivery with a remote-first workforce of over 150 staff. She is a results-focused business leader with a 25-year track record of delivery and over-achievement in the telecoms, IT and high-tech industries.

Dee Coakley

Dee Coakley is the CEO and co-founder of Boundless, a cloud-based platform that allows small and medium-sized innovative businesses to quickly and easily manage multi-country payroll and HR, local tax and employment regulations compliance. Dee is a three-time COO, having spent the last 10 years with scaling B2B SaaS businesses Masabi, Bizimply and Axonista.

Finn Hegarty

Finn is Co-Founder and CPO at Glofox. The platform helps fitness entrepreneurs build successful businesses and improve the health of people worldwide. The business now employs 160+ people globally and operated as a hybrid remote team for over 5 years before transitioning to a fully remote structure last year. Prior to Glofox Finn was a Director at MetLife where he ran large transformational programmes across EMEA following a 8 year career in technology consulting at EY.

Mark O’Toole

Mark is Senior Director with 150Bond. He began his career as a journalist working for a number of years at Newstalk radio, producing sport and current affairs coverage before moving to JOE.ie. He moved to PR and worked with the Web Summit, during its early hockey stick growth phase, and as Head of Press he created the Sport Summit vertical. Mark then moved into agency work. His work since then has led to him receiving 4 PRII awards. He has also been named as one of the Sunday Business Post and Irish Independent’s 30 under 30 winners in 2016.

Deirdre Garvey

Deirdre Garvey is the Chief Executive Officer of charitable nonprofit The Wheel, Ireland’s association of charities, community & voluntary organisations and social enterprises. Deirdre has represented the sector’s interests through serving on a wide range of government committees and fora. She is in demand as a media and public speaker on the topics of ethics and governance for charitable non-profit organisations, charities regulation, best practice in the non-profit sector and how societies can maximise the involvement and engagement of people and communities in public decision-making.

Clare Power

Clare Power is Senior Executive for Regional Remote Working at Enterprise Ireland. During the pandemic, Clare led the Enterprise Ireland Covid-19 Business Response for a global workforce of 800, dispersed across 50 global locations, driving the transition from forced-remote to hybrid working. It is this experience that sparked her interest in the future of remote and hybrid working for Irish Industry considering the positive impacts on regional economic development, climate change, digitisation, and diversity agendas. Now in her Regional Remote Working role, Clare is leading the development and implementation of a remote working strategy to support Irish enterprise in each region of Ireland.

Dr Andrew Forde

Dr Andrew Forde is the Head of Rural Strategy and Social Enterprise at the Department of Rural and Community Development. He is responsible for the development and implementation of the National Social Enterprise Policy for Ireland 2019–2022 and Our Rural Future, Ireland’s new National Rural Development Policy 2021–2025. He Chairs the National Social Enterprise Policy Implementation Group and is the Irish government’s representative on the European Commission Expert Group on the Social Economy (GECES).

Clodagh O’Reilly

Clodagh O’Reilly is a PhD candidate in TU Dublin researching the topic of the scaling of social enterprises particularly looking at the triggers for growth, she is passionate about the potential of social enterprises to play a significant role in creating a more equitable society. Prior to this, with a background as an accountant, Clodagh worked in the social enterprise and charity sector where she was involved at a leadership level in several organisations including Suas, Solas Project and ReCreate Ireland. Clodagh is the principal at Social Enterprise Solutions Ireland.

Ruth Morrissy

Ruth Morrissy is an Assistant Principal Officer in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Working in the Labour Market and Skills Unit, Ruth has led on several projects on remote work, such as the 2019 Remote Work in Ireland report, the creation of the Department’s Guidance for Working Remotely website, and the Department’s public consultation on the guidance. In 2020, Ruth led the development of ‘Making Remote Work’, Ireland’s first National Remote Work Strategy. The Strategy was published in January 2021 and Ruth is now leading on the implementation of its actions.

Padraig Boland

Padraig is the FET Skills Manager with Laois and Offaly ETB. He and his team led the collaboration with Grow Remote, SOLAS and the IDA that resulted in the national Remote Work Ready and Leading Remote Teams Programmes in 2020. Deeply rooted in community development Padraig considers remote working as a key ingredient in the development of sustainable rural communities. He is chair of the Midland Region Transition Team’s working group on Employment Continuity Pathways that strives to ensure the transition to a low carbon economy in the region leaves no one behind, especially the most impacted employees, their families and their communities.