Sarah Conaghan and Siobhan Lyons.
Sarah Conaghan, managing director of the Mid-Atlantic Rose of Tralee Centre, and Siobhan Lyons, executive director of the Irish Immigration Center of Greater Phildelphia, were named to the Irish Echo newspaper’s “40 under 40” list, which recognizes 40 people of Irish descent who, as publish Mairtin O’ Muilleoir describes them, are “high flyers who can taste, see, and shape the future.”
Conaghan, 33, of Villanova, founded the Rose of Tralee Center in Philadelphia in 2002, which was the first year a Philadelphia contestant was represented in the international competition in Tralee, County Kerry, now in its 41st year. An outgrowth of Tralee’s traditional Carnival Queen, a town event, the Rose Festival is now broadcast on Irish TV every year. When Conaghan and her sisters would visit their Donegal grandmother every summer, she says, they would be glued to the TV, scoring the contestants on their hair and gowns. While other girls her age dreamt of being Miss America, Conaghan says she always wanted to be a Rose.
She never became one, but today, she helps other young women achieve their dream. When she is not busy (very busy) working the Philadelphia and Mid-Atlantic Rose events (March 27 and June 26 this year), she is active in immigration reform activities (her father, Tom, is the founder of the Irish Immigration Center in Philadelphia), volunteers at the Commodore Barry Memorial Library at the Irish Center, serves on the Inspirational Irish Women Awards committee and is a member of the Donegal Association.
Siobhan Lyons, 36, was born in Dublin, but led the peripatetic life of the daughter of an Irish diplomat, growing up Nairobi, London, Washington, DC, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She majored in Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She spent some time in the Irish diplomatic corps in the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and, when her then-husband’s work took him to the US, she volunteered at variety of nonprofits. Prior to taking over the helm of the Irish Immigration Center last year, Lyons was director of communications and foundation for the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia.
Since she became executive director of the Immigration Center, located in Upper Darby, Lyons has launched a community-wide survey of the needs of both immigrations and Irish-Americans alike with an eye to providing a greater range of services. Irish Consul General Niall Burgess spoke at a reception at the center marking the survey launch. She has also forged a new partnership between the center and the Drexel Law School to help provide regular confidential legal counseling services to Irish community members dealing with immigration issues and more. Every Saturday in March this year, the center is hosting workshops to help Irish immigrants to apply for citizenship and Irish-Americans get their Irish citizenship, available to anyone whose parents or grandparents were born in Ireland.
In the past few years, Philadelphia has been represented on this prestigious annual list by Karen Boyce McCollum, associate director of corporate communications at Cephalon and well known Irish singer formerly with the band, Causeway, and Theresa Flanagan Murtagh, an attorney and former president of the Donegal Association who has her own band (The Theresa Flanagan Band).
