Kathleen O'Meara

KATHLEEN O'MEARA is a public affairs consultant: www.kathleenomeara.ie tel 087 1264316

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Kathleen O’Meara offers expertise on designing strategies and overseeing plans which influence thinking and deliver change, particularly social change. She draws on her experience of policy making, legislation, and strategic communication to devise the best approach to make change happen whether through legislation, policy formation or direct influencing. She engages her extensive network of relationships and contacts when she is in the process of bringing issues to the political and official audience. She advises on the best approach, taking the issue, the context, and the intended outcome into account.
 

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS

Devising an effective communications strategy is vital to the success of a campaign. Kathleen works to build an integrated strategy, including defining key messages, deploying appropriate language, agreeing actions, and brings her communications expertise to the roll-out of the campaign. She advises on the timing and delivery of the key elements of the campaign so that they land powerfully, gain traction, and are effective.
 

COMMUNICATIONS SUPPORT

She offers support in delivering a key message effectively, whether it be on media, to an internal audience, before an Oireachtas Committee, or to an individual public representative or official.
 

WRITING

Kathleen is a proficient speech writer. As a former journalist and RTÉ broadcaster, she crafts scripts and speeches which land powerfully for the audience and allow the authentic voice of the speaker to be heard.
 

KATHLEEN ALSO COLLABORATES WITH COLETTE KELLEHER AS KELLEHER O'MEARA

ABOUT KELLEHER O’MEARA

Colette Kelleher and Kathleen O’Meara formed Kelleher O’Meara as a partnership in 2020, to offer our combined skills and experience to the not for profit and public sectors. We are currently working with the National Women’s Council  (NWC) to develop a new Strategic Plan.

Colette and Kathleen bring a wealth of relevant skills, expertise and  experience from their various roles in the independent, not-for-profit organisations negotiating the dynamic of the exercise of power between civil society and the state in Ireland.   

A Senator from 2016 to 2020, Colette has recent first hand experience of the interface between advocacy, policy and delivery on a range of social justice issues.

Colette is a former CEO of Cope Foundation, one of the largest Section 38-funded disability organisations in Ireland, the Alzheimer Society of Ireland as well as Cork Simon Community. In these roles she developed and delivered on a number of strategies within specified timelines. Colette is a qualified Social Worker who has championed adult safeguarding law, home care and dementia supports.

Colette is a Certified Consultant with the Tavistock Institute. As well as working with the National Women’s Council  she is also supporting Young Knocknaheeny to develop and devise its new strategic plan. Colette was recently appointed to the boards of Oaklee Housing, Galtan Housing and as Chair of the Cork Local Drug and Alcohol Task Force. She is chairing an Advisory Group on the reform of the Epsen Act 2004 on a pro-bono basis for AsIAm which is due to report in Autumn 2020.

Up to the end of May 2020, Kathleen O’Meara was Director of Communications, Public Affairs and Fundraising at the Rehab Group, Ireland’s largest Section 39-funded provider, and is a former member of the Board of DFI and ICTR (now Charities Institute). She is currently leading the development of a Campaigns Group for the Not for Profit Association, an umbrella group of eight national disability charities who are campaigning for a new relationship between their sector and the state, specifically their funders, the HSE.

Kathleen served as a Senator from 1997 to 2007 having worked as a journalist in RTÉ and as a Ministerial Advisor before entering Seanad Eireann. Since then she has been a leader in the voluntary sector as Head of Advocacy and Communications at the Irish Cancer Society and in a similar role in the Rehab Group.

Colette and Kathleen both possess excellent analytical and writing skills.

Contact Details: www.kathleenomeara.ie tel 087 1264316

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