Hilary O’Meara became Country Managing Director of Accenture in Ireland on 1 January 2023, succeeding the tenure of previous Country Managing Director, Alastair Blair. A graduate of University College Dublin with a degree in Computer Science, O’Meara joined Accenture (then Andersen Consulting) in October 1993 and began building what has become a highly distinguished career spanning more than three decades.
Throughout her time at Accenture, she has held a range of senior leadership positions, including heading Strategy & Consulting in Ireland, leading the Resources, Technology and Industry practices, and in August 2022, was named County Managing Director for Ireland, beginning in January 2023.
O’Meara is widely noted for combining deep technical and business acumen with a strong focus on people, culture and inclusion. Early in her career, she worked on large-scale technology transformation programmes, and she has spoken about the importance of continuous learning, leadership development and tackling the challenge of talent representation in STEM.
Since taking the helm in Ireland, O’Meara has guided Accenture’s Irish business – now employing more than 5,500 people and hosting the company’s flagship R&D and Innovation Centre (“The Dock”) – through a period of sustained growth, client diversification and deeper connection to Ireland’s education and innovation ecosystem.
Perhaps most significantly, O’Meara has reaffirmed her personal and organisational commitment to inclusion and diversity at a time when global corporate policy is evolving. Globally, Accenture announced in early 2025 that it would be sunsetting its prescribed diversity targets and certain programmes for specific demographic groups, in response to shifting regulatory and political landscapes.
In Ireland, under O’Meara’s leadership, Accenture has chosen a path of maintaining and even strengthening its diversity agenda despite the global shift. In public disclosures, she authored the firm’s Irish gender pay-gap report, stating that Accenture Ireland remains committed “to a 50/50 gender-balanced workforce at all career levels” and emphasising a data-driven, transparent approach to representation and pay equity.
O’Meara has framed this local commitment in strong business and cultural terms: recognising that diverse teams and inclusive leadership are not simply ethical imperatives but drivers of innovation, client relevance and sustainable growth in a rapidly changing environment. She has championed initiatives to support female leadership, mentoring, flexible working, and pipeline development in STEM and analytics.
In doing so, she positions Ireland’s operation of Accenture as a living example of how a large global professional-services firm can remain locally rooted in inclusive values, while aligning to evolving global imperatives. This ability to steer a global business locally – balancing commercial performance, technology disruption, talent strategy and cultural leadership – is precisely what marks her out as a consummate business leader.
O’Meara also serves on the advisory board of UCD’s Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and is a board member of the Open Doors Initiative, among other civic and educational engagements. It is her leadership through change, her steadfast commitment to inclusion at a moment of global policy retreat, and her strategic orchestration of a major employer-innovation hub in Ireland that make her our Woman of the Year in Business.
