Caroline O'Driscoll, Tax Partner, KPMG, Cork

Caroline is a tax partner based in KPMG's Cork office. She has over 15 years experience of providing tax advise to Multinational companies particularly on inward and outward investment in the sectors of Pharmaceutical, Technology and Food/Drinks.

She also advises on a number of high growth indigenous Irish companies, particularly in the technology sector, as they rapidly expand their business within Ireland and into International markets.

Caroline sits on KPMG's national technology steering group which leads the firms strategy for this sector and is a member of KPMG's global international corporate tax team.

Caroline will provide insights into the various tax incentives and reliefs available to start up companies and share some practical tax hints and tips for SME's expanding into overseas markets.










John O'Doherty, Regional Director, AIB Bank Cork Central

John has been Regional Director for Cork Central Region for the last 2 years with responsibility for 25 branches across Cork City and County.

Previous roles include a period of 4 years as Regional Director in Kerry, 5 years as Branch Manager in Newcastlewest, Co Limerick, 3 years as Area Sales Manager for AIB Area South and 3 years as a Lending Manager across a number of AIB Regions in Munster. AIB has the largest market share of all Financial Services companies operating in the Cork area covering the Personal, SME and Corporate market.

John sits on the evaluation panel for the Anual Genesis Awards at the Rubicon Centre. He has seen first hand the entrepreneurial ambitions and innovation of Cork based companies through his involvement with this programme. In addition, for a period of 5 years up to 2006, John was a member of the Limerick County Enterprise Board Evaluation Committee responsible for accessing grant applications to the Limerick County Enterprise Board. These grand applications were generally from early stage entrepreneurs.

The above, allied to his extensive Banking experience gives him an insight into challenges and opportunities facing entrepreneurs as they face into the market.










Kieran Moynihan, CEO Coach & Management Consultant

Kieran is a dynamic experienced entrepreneur and global executive with an outstanding track record over his 21 year career. Kieran is an executive coach for a number of CEOs of high-growth companies. Kieran is the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Cork Institute of Technology and Rubicon Centre with significant experience in nurturing early-stage high-potential companies.

Kieran co-founded Comnitel, a telecoms software company in 1999 and led the company as CEO from initial start-up through a 30 million-dollar series of fundraising with leading international venture capitalists. Over the period 2003 - 2007 Kieran performed the role of Chief Technology Officer for Vallent (a combinatoin of 3 telecoms software companies Comnitel, Metrica and WatchMark) driving the company's product and go-to-market strategy leading to the acquisition of Vellent (450 staff) by IBM in February 2007.

Kieran took on the role of Vice President and CTO for Telecoms for the IBM Tivoli division and has also been a key strategist and visionary for IBM's overall telecoms business worldwide.