Irish Roundtable in the Valley

Ciaran Sheehan is Managing Partner at Clarendon Executive, Northern Ireland’s leading executive search firm. He brings more than three decades of experience in executive search and board advisory, specialising in C-suite and non-executive appointments across the private, public, and third sectors. As a key strand of their executive search focus, Ciaran and the Clarendon Executive team have built deep connections with the Irish diaspora, successfully attracting internationally-based leaders back to Northern Ireland to advance their careers.

Beyond executive recruitment and a range of other business interests, Ciaran is a long-standing champion of youth entrepreneurship. He served as Chair of Young Enterprise Northern Ireland for seven years and now leads a US-based philanthropic foundation – Friends of Young Enterprise Foundation Inc.  The purpose of this Foundation is to raise funds and donations through networks and connections within the Irish Diaspora to help young people, especially those from deprived areas, to get engaged in entrepreneurship and build the confidence and critical skills to become empowered to create their own opportunities. 

Colm Ó Riain coordinates philanthropic strategy and hiring to support the growth plans of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, CA . After 15 years working in the video game industry at companies including Electronic Arts and Activision, he moved into philanthropy work at Zynga.org and Harmony Project before joining MIRI in 2016. He has a master’s degree in AI from the University of Rochester and a joint honours bachelor’s in Mathematics and Computer Science. The Machine Intelligence Research Institute carrys out foundational mathematical research to ensure smarter-than-human artificial intelligence has a positive impact.

Colm is also a professional violinist and composer and ws hailed as a “genius fiddler” by Mike Scott of The Waterboys,

In the USA, which he currently calls home, he has enthralled audiences on stages as diverse as CBGB’s in New York to Fillmore West and Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.  

Colm thrives when creating bridges not just between musics but also to other art forms and has composed music for both film and modern dance.   

Gary Gilchrist is Vice President of Software Architecture at Oracle for the Oracle Health Suite, where he and his team lead architecture and design for Oracle’s AI based Oracle Health EHR and its component systems in the Oracle Cloud. This involved completely reimagining the systems architecture for today’s electronic health records management around Oracle’s latest cloud native services for runtime, data management, UX and AI, while still working alongside existing critical systems of record at hospitals and clinics.

Gary left Belfast back in 1993 to start his career at Oracle working on Oracle Networking and Database Security. He went on to hold senior engineering roles at BlackBerry and Adobe where he led innovations in mobile and enterprise security, and rejoined Oracle again in 2020. He lives in San Francisco where he enjoys foggy hill walks and always discovering something new about the diverse history of his adopted city.

Jacinta is a globally recognized technology leader, named as one of the top 50 most influential women in technology by Silicon Valley Global magazine.

Jacinta is a category creator and has deep expertise in bringing game changing AI technology to market. She has led all go to market functions including sales, marketing, business development and customer retention for AI companies for 15 years. She was Global SVP Sales and CMO at Cloudmark, a company that applies AI to provide messaging security for 2 billion online users and brand protection for major banks and retailers. Most recently she ran go to market for LeoLabs, a company that applies AI to monitor and predict all satellite traffic in space. She has contributed to several exits achieving valuations ranging from $150M to $12.3B.

In addition to her full-time roles, Jacinta is an advisor to companies on GTM planning and exit strategies. 

Jacinta has also been a long-term board member and ambassador of M3AAWG, a global working group that fosters cooperation between international governments and commercial entities to increase global online security.

Now living in San Francisco, Jacinta is originally from County Clare and graduated from Dublin City University with a degree in International Marketing and Languages. 

Jennifer Byrne is General Partner at Grit Capital Partners, an early-stage, specialist venture fund investing in Applied AI across FinTech/InsurTech, Commerce, Media, and MarTech. In 2024, she co-founded the Female Investors Club in Los Angeles and New York, a community advancing women in technology investing through leadership development, education, and deal flow.

Previously, she co-founded and led Quesnay Inc., a strategy and innovation firm known for global accelerators and executive programs. Quesnay partnered with major corporations including Farmers Insurance, Hearst, Liberty Mutual, Nationwide, Paramount, Prudential, Thomson Reuters, and Verizon. Quesnay also launched the world’s largest Female Founders in FinTech & InsurTech accelerator, evaluating 500+ women-led startups from 78 countries, which collectively raised over $1.8B.

Earlier, Jennifer held executive roles at American Express and Verizon. At Verizon, she launched its innovation division, oversaw a multi-billion-dollar mobile application portfolio, led the rollout of 4G services, and championed investments in Siri and Twilio, alongside partnerships with Amazon, Facebook, Google/YouTube, and Twitter.

She serves on the Duke University SoCal Board, co-chairs the Duke Women’s Forum SoCal, and has been recognized on Innovate Finance’s Powerlist, NYC Inspiring FinTech Females, and more. A Duke graduate, she speaks Spanish, Italian, and French.

Matt Regan is Senior Vice President of Public Policy whose responsibilities include promoting the Bay Area Council’s legislative and political agendas at the local, state and federal levels. Matt has lead responsibility for the Council’s federal, state and local government relations work and oversees a four-person team focused on 21st century energy and communications infrastructure and water policy. Matt has over 15 years experience working in the political arena and prior to joining the Bay Area Council Matt worked as a contract lobbyist, an in-house Government Affairs specialist for a large bank, a State Assembly legislative aide and a field organizer for several high profile elections across the Bay Area.

Matt is a native of Derry. He attended the Middlesex University School of Law in London where he earned his LLB and the University of Ulster School of Business where he graduated with a Post Graduate Degree in Marketing.

Micheál Smith, from County Armagh, is Ireland’s Consul General in the Western United States. 

Prior to moving to San Francisco, Micheál was Director of Global Ireland in the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

He led Ireland’s Embassy/Consulate expansion, Ireland’s presence at Expo 2020, the development of ireland.ie, and campaigns to increase Irish citizen engagement with Ireland’s global role, among other initiatives

He started his career as an Economic Analyst in the Department of Communications and Energy based in Dublin before taking up a First Secretary role in the Embassy of Ireland in Singapore. Micheál went on to establish IDA Ireland’s first ASEAN office, which he led for 3 years.

Micheál then moved to help drive IDA Ireland’s efforts in the US, focusing on the US Mid-West, South and South-East.

Micheál holds a BSC in Management (Business & Economics) from Queen’s University Belfast and a MSC in Economic Policy Studies from Trinity College Dublin. He is married to Claire and they have four children – Sophie, Senan, Conan and Oisín.

Rachael Healy is a Scottish/Irish PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at Stanford University who works on memory, class, youth and colonialism in Northern Ireland. Her research explores themes of teenage life, care, and intergenerational trauma within a West Belfast neighbourhood. She has an MA in Anthropology and Sociology from the Graduate Institute Geneva and a BA in Global Health and Social Medicine from King’s College London. Outside of her university work, she has worked for several years in various health advocacy and youth work roles in South Africa, Palestine, London and Scotland.

I am an astrophysicist by training, and now I work with Andrew Ng and a team of passionate educators and A.I. experts to build educational experiences that deliver industry-relevant skills and serve to grow and connect the global AI community.

Ryan studied astrophysics at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, eventually getting a PhD in the field. However, having discovered that the academic life was not for him, transitioned to tech, and specifically educational technology and online learning in 2016. He is now at his third online education company (http://Deeplearning.ai ) he has worked at since leaving academia.

Successful entrepreneur and senior executive, 25 years experience building great companies in online and mobile sectors

Specialties: Big Data, Market Research and Intelligence, Mobile Applications and Content, Digital Media, Consumer Electronics, Telecommunications, Speech Technology, AI

Shawn Flynn is the founder of Silicon Valley Highpoint Capital (SVH Capital), where he and his team uses AI and technology to help in the steps of the transaction process. He began his career in Beijing, China, founding, scaling, and successfully exiting a company before returning to the U.S. to work with fast‑growing Silicon Valley startups to established overseas public companies. He specializes in mergers & acquisitions, raising growth capital, and secondaries.