Funded & Fearless: Dublin 2026
We’re thrilled to have you at Funded & Fearless tonight! Please see supplemental information below.
SPEAKER BIOS
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EVENT PROGRAM
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EILEEN O’MARA
Eileen O’Mara is Stripe’s Vice Chair. She is responsible for representing Stripe with policymakers, senior government officials, state leaders, partners, and executives at Stripe’s customers to foster the conditions which advance entrepreneurship and increase economic dynamism globally.
INDIA HEALY O’CONNOR
India Healy O’Connor is the Founder & CEO of Linda AI. Linda AI builds AI agents for healthcare, starting with the dental front desk, where every unanswered call costs practices patients and revenue. Omnichannel and multi-directional, Linda reaches every patient on the channel they prefer, 24/7, so no call goes unanswered, no lead is lost and every patient gets instant access to care
JAYNE RONAYNE
Jayne is the Co-Founder and CEO of oac, ltd. A second-time founder from Cork, Jayne built her first company, Talivest, into an employee-experience analytics platform backed by investors including Charlie Songhurst and Nicolas Berggruen, and sold it to Australia's Go1. She is also co-founder of The Circle, dinner experiences hosting intimate dinners for female founders and leaders. She advises other startups and is passionate about the food and healthy fitness space.
KATIE DORAN
Katie Doran is the CEO of Consello Ireland. A business leader, entrepreneur and one of Ireland's most trusted strategic communications advisers, Katie has built a reputation as a trusted counsel to CEOs and boards, working with listed companies, multinationals, private businesses and public organisations through defining moments of growth, change and transformation.
MARY MCKENNA
Mary McKenna is a serial tech entrepreneur and angel investor based in Donegal. She co-founded and subsequently sold successful Irish online learning business Learning Pool. Since selling her company, Mary has worked extensively with early stage and scaling ventures and has personally invested in over 40 early stage tech startups to date (5 successful exits so far including 2 this summer). 3 years ago she co-founded Ireland’s first and only women-led angel syndicate, AwakenAngels, along with three other women.
PATRICIA SCANLON, PHD
Dr. Patricia Scanlon, PhD is an AI expert and founder with nearly three decades of experience spanning AI research, entrepreneurship and technology commercialisation. She holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and has worked at Columbia University, Bell Labs and IBM. In 2013, she founded SoapBox Labs, building it into a global leader in voice AI for children before its acquisition by Curriculum Associates in 2023. Her work has also extended to AI governance, responsible innovation and the wider strategic implications of emerging technology. She later served as Ireland’s first AI Ambassador and as Chair of the Government’s AI Advisory Council. Her perspective is shaped by deep technical expertise, an entrepreneurial track record and first-hand experience at the intersection of AI, business and society.
ROSIE RIOS
Rosie Rios is the Chair of America 250, the United States Congressional Commission planning the United State’s 250th anniversary in 2026. She served as the 43rd Treasurer of the United States from 2009-2016 as CEO of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Mint, including Fort Knox and was a Senior Advisor to the Secretary in the areas of community development and public engagement. She also initiated and led the efforts to place a portrait of a woman on U.S. Federal Reserve notes for the first time in history. Upon her resignation in 2016, she received the Hamilton Award, the highest honor bestowed in the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Following her tenure, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University with a focus on Millennials/Post-Millennials and resumed her role as CEO of Red River Associates, an investment management consulting firm and co-host of several reality series focused on pre-IPO investments.
Rosie served twice on the on Treasury/ Federal Reserve Transition Teams on behalf of President Barack Obama at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 and again during the pandemic economy on behalf of President Joe Biden in 2020, the only person who served on both.
Rosie is also on the Board of Directors for Ladies Who Launch.
SARAH FRIAR
Sarah Friar is the Chief Financial Officer of OpenAI, and the Co-Founder of Ladies Who Launch.
From December 2018 to May 2024, Sarah was Chief Executive Officer of Nextdoor, the neighborhood network that connects neighborhood stakeholders, including neighbors, businesses, and public services, online and in real life to build stronger, more vibrant, and resilient neighborhoods. She helped take the Nextdoor public in 2021 under the ticker NYSE:KIND. During Sarah's five-year tenure, Nextdoor nearly tripled to more than 92 million Verified Neighbors, reaching over 335,000 neighborhoods around the world.
Prior to Nextdoor, Sarah served as Chief Financial Officer at Square (now known as Block, Inc.). Under Sarah’s leadership, the company launched its initial public offering in 2015 and added $30 billion in market capitalization. Before her tenure at Square, Sarah served as Senior Vice President of Finance and Strategy at Salesforce. Sarah also held executive roles at Goldman Sachs, and worked at McKinsey in both London and South Africa.
Sarah currently serves on the boards of Walmart and Consensys, a private company in the Web3 arena, as well as the Stanford Board of Trustees. She previously served on the boards of Slack Technologies (2017-2021), Dragonneer Growth Opportunities Corp. (2020-2021), Dragonneer Growth Opportunities Corp. II (2020-2021), Dragonneer Growth Opportunities Corp. III (2021-2023), and New Relic (2013 to 2018). She is a Fellow of the inaugural class of the Finance Leaders Fellowship Program, a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and serves on the advisory board of Operation HOPE. She previously served on the advisory boards of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. She was named to the 2023 NACD Directorship 100 selection, an annual recognition of the leading corporate directors, corporate governance experts, policymakers, and influencers who significantly impact boardroom practices and performance.
Sarah grew up in Northern Ireland and earned her MEng in Metallurgy, Economics, and Management from the University of Oxford and her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she graduated as an Arjay Miller scholar. She holds an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II for services to entrepreneurship.
SARAH MCKENNA
Sarah McKenna is Senior Funding Director for the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands at Wayflyer, where she works with eCommerce founders and leadership teams to navigate funding decisions throughout different stages of growth. With over 12 years’ experience across fintech and SaaS, Sarah advises businesses on how to think about their capital stack, from debt versus equity to choosing the right funding product and structure for a particular use case. Her work focuses on helping founders understand not just how much capital they can access, but when to use it, what to use it for, and how to structure funding in a way that supports growth without putting unnecessary pressure on cash flow
SARAH SEXTON
Sarah Sexton has spent almost twenty years in food and retail, most of it running the parts nobody sees. Supply chain, warehouse teams, industrial bakery, retail, working in MRPI and then Ballymaloe Foods.
Then she went and built her own; Bean Brownie Company, a healthy snack brand and cafe, from scratch.
oac is her second business. An Irish protein and collagen snacking brand she co-founded with Jayne Ronayne and now runs as COO.
SINÉAD HARCOURT
Sinéad Harcourt is a Solutions Architect on Stripe’s EMEA Startups team, working with venture-backed companies as they build and scale. She helps founders and engineering teams design scalable financial infrastructure, advising on technical strategy and integration architecture to support their new business models and international growth.
STEPHANIE TRAN
Stephanie Tran is a Client Partner on OpenAI’s Ads team in EMEA. She helps brands and agencies explore how AI can make their work more useful and accessible to customers.
Before OpenAI, Stephanie held roles at Stripe and Twitter, working with strategic partners across Europe, the US and Asia-Pacific. She is based in London and holds a degree from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
‘TOKUNBOH ISHMAEL
‘Tokunboh Ishmael is a global voice for creating wealth and impact by unlocking the potential of businesses that provide essential goods and services that address the accessibility, affordability, and inclusion needs of underserved markets to drive shared prosperity.
She has dedicated the past two decades to the relentless pursuit of a vision: investing in businesses that foster equity, fairness, and inclusion to create wealth and transform lives.
Always drawn to uncharted waters, she was an early pioneer of socially responsible and impact investing, especially in Africa, and a visionary who forged a path for investing in Fintechs to drive financial inclusion and injecting gender consciousness into the investment process for superior returns.
As co-founder and Managing Director of Alitheia Capital, a female-led private equity firm, she is one of the first in Africa to pioneer impact investing private equity that embodies her philosophy of profit with a purpose. She also co-founded Alitheia IDF where she raised over $100 million to invest in female-led businesses in Africa. Some of the companies she has invested in are already changing and redefining their sector.
‘Tokunboh was a Panelist on the popular Dragons Den Nigeria TV show. She is a mentor to entrepreneurs of small-to-mid-sized businesses, helping them grow and scale their companies to reach their full potential. She is a sought-after collaborator and a partner to African and European governments helping them to tackle intractable problems resulting from a lack of access to essential products and services.
VICTORIA FINLAY
Victoria Finlay is the founder and CEO of The MenoPal, an intelligence platform for menopause and hormone health built for the growing convergence of HRT and GLP-1 care.
WENDY SLATTERY
Wendy Slattery is the founder and CEO of Kaidron, a consumer intelligence platform enabling brands to understand what consumers really think, want and do.
What started as Beauty Buddy has grown into a community of 60K+ real people across Ireland and the UK, giving brands access to authentic consumer-generated content, market research and product feedback at scale. Kaidron combines the power of real human insight with AI, helping brands turn consumer voices into actionable intelligence.
Wendy is passionate about building businesses that put people at the centre of technology. Her approach is simple: AI should enhance human insight, not replace it.
A founder who has built through the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, Wendy has raised over €1.2 million, navigated the realities of fundraising, team building and scaling, and is now taking Kaidron into its next phase of growth across beauty, wellness and FMCG.
Wendy brings an open and candid perspective to entrepreneurship, sharing not just the milestones, but the decisions, challenges, mistakes and lessons behind them.