Catherine Heaney is a consultant with 25 years’ experience in strategic communications, public affairs and stakeholder engagement.

She recently retired from her role as MD of DHR Communications, a company she founded in 2004, and has worked on influential, public-interest campaigns in areas including human rights and reproductive health.

Catherine has considerable board-level and non-executive leadership experience. In addition to her role as a chair of One in Four, she is Chairperson of the Citizens Information Board.  She has chaired the board of the National Museum of Ireland is the most recent chairperson of the Government’s Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility (operated under the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation).  She has served on a range of other boards across government, charity and NGO sectors. 

Catherine studied journalism at undergraduate level and criminology at postgraduate level at TUI Dublin (formerly DIT).  She holds an MPhil in Public History and Cultural Heritage from Trinity College Dublin, and she is a graduate of the prestigious Global Strategic Communications Programme at Columbia University in New York. 

Catherine has served as Chief Executive of the Irish Family Planning Association and Press Officer of the Labour Party.