New Cycling Ireland board member Vern Power
Cycling Ireland has added two new members to its expanded board of directors. The duo have been recruited from outside the sport via a firm specialising in filling board of director vacancies across a variety of sectors.
Association chief executive Geoff Liffey told stickybottle he was confident the two new directors – Senan Turnbull and Vern Power – would bring with them fresh perspectives on how the sport should be run and grown in Ireland.
“Even if they come in and question how we are doing things, we think that is a very valuable exercise and they also have very strong backgrounds that we were attracted to.”
Turnbull and Power were recruited through Boardmatch Ireland, a service that effectively works like a dating agency in matching would-be board members with boards that their skills and backgrounds are suited to.
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Appointing board members from outside the sport is a departure from Cycling Ireland’s traditional recruitment policies.
However, the move is in line with most other organisations in the sporting, voluntary and private sectors where boards are most often made up of people with diverse backgrounds, interests and areas of expertise.
Senan Turnbull comes to the board of Cycling Ireland with a background as a commuting and leisure cyclist.
A public servant all his life, he recently retired from Fingal County Council in north Co Dublin where he was director of community, culture and sports for over a decade.
Cycling Ireland said Turnbull was currently involved with a number of sporting and social groups that were in the process of developing and expanding.
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In his role with Fingal County Council he was, among other things, responsible for staging major outdoor music and sports festivals.
It will be interesting to see if those skills are used by Cycling Ireland to venture into organising mass participation leisure cycles in the same way British Cycling has promoted itself and the sport in the UK in recent years.
The second new member added to the board of Cycling Ireland is Australian Vern Power; a Dublin-based director with KPMG’s transaction services department.
A graduate of the University of Newcastle in Australia, he holds a Bachelor of finance, management, mergers & acquisitions.
He is also treasurer and a board member of the Chrysalis Community Drug Project in inner city Dublin and a committee member of the Ireland-Australia Association.
According to Cycling Ireland, he has road racing experience from his days in Australia and has an interest in developing road riders.
The full Board of Cycling Ireland for 2012 is:
Rory Wyley – President
Jack Watson – Secretary & Vice President
Jim McArdle – Treasurer
Anthony Moran – Director & Vice President
Eddie Keogh – Director
John Horgan – Director
Vern Power – Director
Senan Turnbull – Director
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