With the AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards fast approaching, we’re featuring profiles of the MBA students and graduates who have been shortlisted for the coveted awards.
Today we meet Sharon Cunningham, a graduate of UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, who has been shortlisted for MBA Entrepreneurial Venture (Private Sector).
Sharon Cunningham is a PwC trained Chartered Accountant (ACA) with an MBA from UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and a BSc in Finance from UCC.
She is the Co-founder of speciality pharmaceutical company, Shorla Pharma, which develops innovative oncology products for unmet needs with a focus on women’s and paediatric cancers.
Before this, she was Head of Finance at EirGen Pharma, a subsidiary of OPKO Health Inc.
In 2019, she was awarded the title of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur, won the Sodexo Women Mean Business Female Newcomer Award 2019 with her business partner, Orlaith Ryan, and led a team of five to win the final pitch competition on the MIT-Harvard Medical School Healthcare Innovation Bootcamp in Cambridge MA, US.
Have you always aspired to be an entrepreneur?
I’m from an entrepreneurial family; both my parents run their own businesses. From a young age I had a keen interest in business and entrepreneurship and always knew I would run my own company eventually. I wanted to spend time in practice and industry and gain as much formal education as possible in order to maximise my knowledge and skills, build an industry network and ultimately enhance my credibility in order to succeed.
Post undergraduate, I qualified as a chartered accountant with PwC and joined an early stage pharmaceutical company, EirGen Pharma where I found myself fascinated and inspired watching that company grow to become a major Irish success story. Knowing that I wanted to start my own company, I completed an MBA at Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and co-founded Shorla Pharma in January 2018. In 2019, I led a global team to win the final pitch competition on the highly competitive MIT-Harvard Medical School Healthcare innovation bootcamp in Boston, US and was awarded the title of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur.
If you were to win this award, how would that make a difference to you and your organisation?
Winning this competitive and prestigious award would be hugely meaningful for co-founder Orlaith Ryan and I, and our company. The further validation of our business plan would be invaluable as would be the resulting national and international exposure for Shorla Pharma. We feel that the award would significantly enhance our credibility as a globally focused pharmaceutical company.
The winners will be announced on 7 February 2020.
