Sheila Kavanagh - CNO of Vodafone Ireland - talks about Sustainability, 5G, MPN, ORAN and her career

 

We have a great Podcast with Sheila Kavanagh, who is Chief Network Officer of Vodafone Ireland.

We start by learning about Sheila’s career, she started with Eircell and that was ultimately taken over by the Vodafone Group.  Being a Network Engineer at the time, she was delighted to get the assignment to develop the Roaming Business as this gave her great International Experience and travel opportunities.

Later in her career, Sheila got the opportunity to become Chief Technical Officer for Vodafone Malta, she and her family moved there and she really enjoyed that assignment and learned a lot over four years in a sunnier climate (!).

Moving back to Dublin just before COVID, Sheila took up the Chief Network Officer role and we talk about the issues that face her in this job, such as:

• Building a Sustainable Business – we talk about Reduce, Reuse and Resell, even of the Network Equipment
• Sheila talks about a project to reduce energy usage using Artificial Intelligence, which is quite interesting
• The impact of 5G particularly on the Enterprise Market using Mobile Private Networks and how Vodafone brings value to Customers using Industry 4.0 principles
• Vodafone’s plans in the area of O-RAN and the progress they have already made.

We talk about how Sheila was successful in her career as a female executive in technology and how she works with her teams today, mainly she ensures that the teams emphasise Customer Focus as their main priority.

Finally, we play out with a banger of tune that we all know well. Thanks for being a great guest Sheila.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheila-kavanagh-0ba6394/