Shirley Kavanagh

Biography

Dr. Shirley Kavanagh is an evidence-based consultant and executive advisor in leadership and strategic Human Resource Management, with over 30 years’ industry experience. Shirley supports leaders and leadership teams to thrive and has coached executives and teams across multiple sectors. Her background as a global leader is reinforced by deep multi-sector experience, having held senior HR and commercial leadership roles in financial services, pharma and life sciences, the public sector, and retail.

Shirley has extensive expertise in talent management, strategic HRM, organisational design, employee engagement, cultural change, and leadership. She translates this experience into the classroom by connecting contemporary research and evidence with real-world leadership practice, bringing academic rigour and practitioner insight together to create applied learning with impact.

She has completed a Research Fellowship at Trinity College Dublin examining how industry and education can work together to address critical shortages in Advanced Digital Skills. She has served as a Board member of Music Network Ireland and is an Independent Chair for Senior Public Appointments in the Irish Public Service.

Shirley is an Adjunct Teaching Fellow in Trinity Business School on the Masters in Human Resource Management and Trinity MBA programmes. She holds a PhD from Trinity College Dublin, an MSc (Management Science) with merit from the University of Leicester, and a Diploma in Corporate Governance (Glasgow Caledonian University). She is the recipient of MED Best Paper in Management Education and Development Award for the publication “In the eye of the storm: Turbulent times and the MBA”.