As the death has been announced of Keelin Shanley, we look back at an interview we did with the RTÉ broadcaster for International Women's Day in 2017.
International Women's Day is upon us and to celebrate we got chatting to journalist Keelin Shanley about her involvement in IWD and the women she looks up to.
What does International Women's Day mean to you?
I suppose International Women's Day, for me, has always been an opportunity to get to hear from some women that I would respect.
There's a lot of events held on Women's Day where you get to hear the stories behind some of the more successful women that you deal with in day to day life.
I think that's really interesting, I think that it's a day that women engage a little more with how they have got where they've got to in their careers.
What will the focus of your IWD event in RTÉ today?
The theme is #BeBoldForChange. It's about being bold, it's about taking risks and it's about hearing the individual stories of the three women who are going to be on the panel who have all achieved quite extraordinary things in their own careers.
I think the audience is going to be genuinely interested to know about some of the decisions they've taken, to know how they've come to those decisions, about the choices they've made. It's always interesting to get a fresh perspective on your own life.
I always think Women's Day is almost like a really intense mentoring day because you get all kinds of insights from all kinds of different avenues. There's a thing about Women's Day where you get insights that you wouldn't really seek out yourself but people are out there and they're thinking and talking so it's always an interesting day.
What will your key questions to RTÉ Chair Moya Doherty, DG Dee Forbes & Twitter MD Sinéad McSweeney be?
I'm always curious when people are very successful in their careers, when you ask them about it, it's very interesting to get their analysis of why they have got to where they are.
Julie Sinnamon, years ago at a Women's Day event, said that the thing she wished she knew starting out was 'be very careful about who your boss is'. She said that is a key piece of advice she would give to younger women.
It's something you just would never have thought about but when they look back over their own careers they can identify, almost like pivot points, where it could have gone either way. They very often don't realise how big the decision is at the time, it's only in retrospect. So I think getting those kind of insights will be interesting.
Did you have a mentor or someone you have idolised in your career?
Honestly, I always think my mother had a huge influence on me. I always really admired her approach to life, she never took it too seriously but she was very hard working. She was thoughtful, she engaged with things but it was never the end of the world.
The other people that I have been very grateful for are my own friends. I went to school here in Dublin and my closest friends to this day are the girls I went to school with, they're people I would go to for advice and support, difficult decisions at work or at home or whatever.
There's a lot of support around you, I think that sometimes we don't spot.
