Leonora O'Brien

Leonora O’Brien is a pharmacist and technology entrepreneur. Her focus is on scaling impact businesses across international markets. Leonora founded Pharmapod a company that 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 over 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 securing over 65% of the Canadian market.

Leonora has served on a number of boards, including the Technology Ireland Board, and was a member of Council for the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. In 2021 Pharmapod was acquired by Think Research in Canada and Leonora is now pursuing other business interests. Leonora is an ambassador for women in business and STEM and is the current Jury President of the European region for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards. She has won numerous awards for business, pharmacy practice and innovation, including WMB Woman in Technology Award, Business of the Year Award (Irish Women’s awards), and the Tatler Woman of the Year Award for Entrepreneurship.

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What people are saying

“Enterprise Ireland believes that Ireland’s economic success will depend on a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem which utilises all the skills, ambition and talent of a diverse population. Increasing the opportunities for women entrepreneurs and women in management is a key focus for Enterprise Ireland, and our six-year Women in Business Strategy aims to grow the number of women becoming entrepreneurs and leaders. We’ve set ambitious targets, including doubling the number of women-led companies in the export market by 2025, and progress is now clear. In 2022, 58 (more than one-third) of the 161 start-ups we invested in were women-led, up from just 8% in 2012. ‘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 leading Irish companies in the future and we look forward to supporting them on their journey.”

“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.”