Chicago Leadership Forum Breakfast Kevin O’Malley 2017

Attire: Business Casual

Private Event – by invitation only

Thank you.

Ambassador O’Malley served as the United States Ambassador to Ireland from 2014 to 2017.

Previously, Mr. O’Malley was a trial lawyer in the Litigation Department at Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale, P.C. in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was a partner, until resigning in order to become a US Ambassador.

During his tenure as Ambassador, he visited every county in Ireland, engaging with the peace process in Northern Ireland and getting to know the country where his grandparents were born.
Among the most poignant moments for O’Malley was when he presented his credentials to President Michael D Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin on October 8, 2014. Flanked by a guard of honour from Collins Barracks in Cork, it was a solemn and formal occasion but a moving one, too.
“I stood in front of the President’s home, listening to the band play ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and I could see the faces of my grandparents,” he recalled.

They were Michael and Elizabeth O’Malley who left their home in Westport, Co Mayo, for the US in 1907, with seven children in tow. They had eight more in the US, the first of them the ambassador’s father, after they settled in Chicago in 1910.