Ms Kathryn Kiely

Biography

Kathryn Kiely is Vice President for External Affairs at South East Technological University (SETU). This is an executive leadership position with responsibility for driving regional engagement and stakeholder partnerships at the university. She represents the university in a wide variety of research and education/skills fora interacting with stakeholders from industry, government departments, public sector, international investors and the European Commission.   

Prior to this, Kathryn was Head of the Research and Innovation Support Units at the Institute. In this position she played a significant role in supporting the development of the Institute’s research capability working with the academic community to access EU, national and industry RDI funding, promoting the Institute’s research expertise to external stakeholders and managing industry / academic RDI collaborations. Kathryn was responsible for establishing the technology transfer office at WIT leading on the development of the policy, governance and support framework for intellectual property management and headed up the team responsible for identifying, protecting and commercialising IP arising from Institute’s research projects either through licensing and/or new venture creation.  

Kathryn secured €5m investment for the development of the University’s Innovation Centre, ArcLabs, which supports approximately 60 start-ups / early-stage companies annually through its programmes, infrastructure and innovation networks. She has been involved in the development of a number of regional enterprise support initiatives such as Hackathons, Accelerator and Pre-accelerator programmes. 

Kathryn has held directorship positions in both commercial and non-for-profit organisations including as a director and President of Waterford Chamber of Commerce which represents more than 600 businesses.  

Prior to joining higher education Kathryn’s career involved working in a variety of roles in financial services and international consultancy sectors; most recently in ESB International in which she was involved in the delivery of engineering consultancy and training programmes in Central and Eastern Europe. 

Kathryn holds a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from University College Cork and an MBS from UCD Smurfit School of Business. She has undertaken a number of training programme in areas of corporate governance, leadership, licencing and contracts management.