Biography
Imelda Hurley,
Chief Executive Officer, Coillte
Imelda Hurley has extensive executive and non-executive experience in public company, state owned, private equity and venture capital backed businesses. She has built that experience in multiple geographies including Ireland, UK, Eastern Europe, and Asia, and across a variety of sectors including forestry, agriculture, food, technology related product development and supply chain management.
Imelda is the CEO at Coillte, Ireland’s state forestry company which is responsible for managing over one million acres of primarily forested lands. Coillte is the nation’s largest forester and provider of outdoor recreation space. It also enables approximately one-third of Ireland’s wind-energy via the estate, processes forestry by-products and undertakes nature rehabilitation projects of scale. Imelda’s focus is on delivering a sustainable future for all by ensuring that Coillte balances and delivers the multiple benefits of forestry, including forests for climate, for wood, for nature and for people. She is also a non-executive director at NYSE listed Dole plc and at IBEC. In addition, she is a patron of Chapter Zero Ireland, a community of non-executive directors that lead Irish boardroom discussions on the impacts of climate change.
Prior to joining Coillte, Imelda was an executive director and CFO with agri-services group Origin Enterprises plc and, earlier in her career, she held a range of senior leadership positions including CFO & Head of Sustainability at technology related product development and supply chain management group PCH International, and Group Finance Director at convenience food manufacturer Greencore Group plc. She has previously served as a non-executive director of Total Produce plc, Valeo Foods and Ervia.
Imelda holds a Bachelor of Business Studies from University of Limerick, is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and an alumna of Harvard Business School.