Leonora O'Brien

Leonora qualified as a pharmacist and worked in pharmacy practice, regulation and policy development in Ireland and across the European Union. She founded Pharmapod in 2012, having noticed a gap in the market for inter-pharmacy interaction in respect of the reporting of critical incidents. Pharmapod developed a global software platform to reduce medication errors and deliver safe effective clinical services for patients worldwide. With Leonora as CEO, Pharmapod was widely adopted across 10,000 pharmacies and Long Term Care facilities by corporate clients such as Pillpack by Amazon in the US, CareRx in Canada as well as independent pharmacies and Pharmacy regulators. Pharmapod launched in multiple international markets including US, Australia, UK and Ireland, and secured over 65% of the Canadian market. In 2021, Pharmapod was acquired by Think Research in Canada and Leonora is now pursuing other business and charity interests. Leonora has won numerous awards for business, pharmacy practice and innovation, including Laureate for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, and the Tatler Woman of the Year Award for Entrepreneurship.

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What people are saying

“Enterprise Ireland’s six-year Women in Business Strategy aims to increase the participation of women in both entrepreneurship and business leadership. This is because we recognise the potential for boosting economic performance by maximizing all of the skills and talent available in Ireland. We’ve set some ambitious targets, including doubling the number of women-led companies in the export market by 2025. Last year, 29% of our High Potential Start-Ups (HPSUs) included a woman founder - up from just 7% in 2011 - and we are well on track to achieve our 2025 goal of 30%. One of our four key objectives is to ensure that we build a strong pipeline of future entrepreneurs, and “Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs” is all about reaching out to and supporting women who want to become entrepreneurs and build innovative businesses of scale, focused on export markets. I have no doubt that many of these will be the HPSUs of the future.”

“KPMG has a strong track record of supporting women in business, so we are proud to be involved with Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs. We are excited to see all of the opportunities that this initiative will open for women who have a vision to harness their skills to be entrepreneurs growing scalable businesses. This tailored initiative will encourage more women to establish innovative businesses focused on growth with global ambition. In addition to the panel of Inspiring Female Entrepreneurs who will offer insights into their entrepreneurial journey, KPMG’s experts will facilitate a series of Inspiring workshops and share their expertise with this year’s ambitious entrepreneurs on a wide range of key business matters such as cyber security, corporate and tax governance, raising finance and much more.”