The Jack & Jill Children’s Foundation, an Irish charity providing home nursing care to children under five nationwide including end of life care, announces the appointment of Carmel Doyle as CEO effective immediately. Carmel has worked with Jack & Jill for the past ten years, initially as Communications Director, and more recently as Interim CEO since June 2018, replacing Hugo Jellett who stepped down as CEO. Her appointment follows a comprehensive recruitment process over the last four months that attracted a high standard and volume of over 70 applicants.
Carmel started working with Jack & Jill in 2008 having been introduced to Jonathan Irwin, the founder of the charity, through a friend whose child was in receipt of Jack & Jill’s unique model of home nursing care. Today, Jack & Jill supports 340 precious children across the country, mobilising an army of 600 community nurses and carers who provide this service to families 365 days a year, with no waiting list.
With 30 years’ experience at senior management and board level in communications and business, Carmel has worked with several PR consultancies in Ireland and internationally, including Text 100, Edelman, Keating & Associates and Heneghan PR, as well as running her own business. She specialised in corporate PR and campaigns across a wide range of clients including multinationals and not for profit organisations, winning several awards for her work. A former researcher with NCB Stockbrokers, she is a marketing graduate and a fellow, lecturer and former President of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland.
Donal Kavanagh, Chairman of the Board of Jack & Jill said: “We are delighted to have someone of Carmel’s calibre and experience to lead the charity in our next phase of development and growth towards 2020 and beyond. We are confident that Carmel has the right skillset to successfully lead the team into another challenging year of delivering the best home nursing care possible for the precious children and families under our wing and to fundraise another €3.8 million to keep the service going. Community is at the heart of everything we do at Jack & Jill. Carmel understands that and demonstrates a real passion for the vital home nursing care support we provide that is child and family centred, delivered by a highly qualified nursing team in the community and supported by our dedicated fundraising team in Johnstown, Co. Kildare. All made possible by the generosity of the public and our corporate partners. I want to join the rest of the Board, our nursing and fundraising team, our volunteers, supporters and the whole Jack & Jill community in welcoming Carmel on board.”
Commenting on her new appointment Carmel said: “I want to thank the Board of Jack & Jill for the opportunity to lead this charity and to build on the solid foundation laid by Jonathan Irwin and Mary Ann O’Brien, our co-founders. I understand just how much the families we support depend on their Jack & Jill hours and this gives such a strong sense of community, identity and purpose to me and to the charity. Our key priorities in 2019 are to strive for further expansion of the service, to reinforce the Jack & Jill funding model and to convince the HSE to pay more of the running costs while always demonstrating good governance by showing exactly where the money goes and the difference every donation makes.”
