GGAA 2013 GGAA 2013

Keynote Speakers


Keynote Address

Leo Crawford
Operations Management at the Heart of the Recovery


Leo Crawford is Group Chief Executive of the BWG Group. BWG Group has an annual turnover of €1.2 billion and owns the SPAR and Mace franchises in the Republic of Ireland. In addition the Group has a wholesale Cash & Carry operation with 23 outlets in the Republic of Ireland. BWGs operations extend to the UK where it owns Appleby Westward which operates the SPAR franchise in the South West of England (www.bwg.ie).

Leo joined BWG in 1996 as Managing Director of BWG Foods and was appointed Chief Executive of BWG Group in 1999. Prior to joining BWG, Leo was Group Finance Director of Irish Distillers Group (1991-1996) and during this period he was a non-Executive Director of BWG.

In 2002 Leo led the management buyout of the BWG Group from Pernod Ricard in conjunction with Electra Partners Europe. In October 2006, Triode Investments Ltd, a company controlled by Leo, John Clohisey and John O’Donnell completed the purchase of BWG Group from Electra (Cognetas) for €390 million.

Leo was appointed to the SPAR International Board in 2001 and was elected President of SPAR International in 2005. SPAR operates in 36 countries worldwide with 12,000 stores and annual retail sales of €31.1 billion (www.spar-international.com). Leo became the first ever Irish person to be elected President of SPAR International. Leo is a non executive director of Stafford Holdings (www.staffordgroup.ie).

In June 2010 / 2011 Leo served as President of IBEC (Irish Business and Employers Confederation). IBEC is the representative body for business and employers in Ireland with a unique network of over 7,500 member organisations (www.ibec.ie). Leo continues as a member of the IBEC Board.

Educated at Trinity College Dublin (BBS) and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (FCMA). Leo is also an Advisory Board Member of the Trinity School of Business (www.tcd.ie).

Leo is married to Adrienne and they have two sons Keith and Alan.


Keynote Speakers

Mark Pagell
Mark Pagell holds a Chair in Global Leadership and is a Professor of Sustainable Supply Chain Management at University College Dublin. He is also an Adjunct Scientist at the Institute for Work and Health in Toronto, Canada. Prior to joining UCD he was a Professor of Operations Management and Information Systems at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto, Canada. And he spent the 2009-2010 academic year at University College Dublin on a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship studying sustainable supply chain management. He received his PhD in Operations and Sourcing Management from Michigan State University in 1997.

Dr. Pagell does research on topics such as sustainable supply chain management, human resource issues including employee safety in operational environments, and operational responses to environmental uncertainty. Dr. Pagell has a proven record of getting funding from national and international sources. For instance, he is presently the PI of a (CA) 387,000 grant from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario to study how organizations can create and maintain production systems that are safe and productive. Dr. Pagell has published over 45 peer reviewed journal articles in a number of premier outlets including: Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management. Dr. Pagell’s research has won a number of awards including best papers published in the Journal of Supply Chain Management (2009), International Journal of Operations and Production Management (2005) and Journal of Operations Management (2002) as well as best Operations Management paper at the Academy of Management meetings in 2001 and 2003 and best paper in the Sustainability track at the Decision Sciences meetings in 2008 and 2011.