Denise Sidhu, partner and director of Cork headquartered Kernel Capital, has been elected chairperson of the Irish Venture Capital Association (IVCA).
The Irish Venture Capital Association is the representative organisation for venture capital and private equity firms in Ireland.
Last year venture capital investment into Irish tech start-ups and SMEs totalled over €1.3 billion.
Ms Sihu replaces Leo Hamill at the IVCA former managing partner of Investec Ventures in Ireland, who has completed his term of office.
Denise Sidhu is the third woman to chair the IVCA in the last four years.
She said her focus as IVCA chair would be to work with Government and all relevant stakeholders to put financial structures in place to ensure indigenous technology and life science firms will be able to source funding locally and maximise their potential.
"Ireland's most innovative technology firms are being cherry picked by global investors. We need to be able to scale from local resources, rather than letting international investors harvest our best companies and develop jobs and headquarters overseas rather than here in Ireland," she said.
"Failure to provide locally sourced scaling funding means that that Irish jobs and headquarters move abroad just at a time when companies are reaching their maximum growth potential. Funding local companies and scaling them here will help to broaden the tax base," she added.
