Background

Sinéad has two decades’ experience in advocacy and disability inclusion. Born with a physical disability, Sinéad spent much of her early life educating and advocating for society to understand their role in designing disabling environments. From an early age, she understood the value of lived experience to identify solutions.

Her formal career and qualifications began in education, where Sinéad studied to be a primary school teacher, and developed her communication skills with a Masters in Broadcast Production for TV and Radio. She holds two honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh and Parsons: The New School.

Sinéad founded Tilting the Lens to design, implement, and measure solutions for system change. By bringing together a collective of disabled and non-disabled people, her ambition was to create the environments and the conditions for disabled people to thrive: in society, in the workplace, and at Tilting the Lens.

“I founded Tilting the Lens to make a meaningful, measurable, and economic difference to disabled people – those who are and identify as disabled now, and those who will in the future.”

Role at Tilting the Lens

Sinéad leads and is accountable for the overall strategic and business development of Tilting the Lens. As CEO, she communicates the company’s ambitions, achievements, and processes with stakeholders and wider society. She upholds and reinforces Tilting the Lens’ cultural values, and mentors, encourages, and challenges her colleagues so that they can thrive in their working life.

Client-side, Sinéad specialises in stakeholder engagement, supporting businesses to progress through our model for understanding and implementing accessibility. She supports the team to advance client ambitions, and the clients themselves in communicating and celebrating their achievements, as well as looking forward to designing the next objectives.

In Sinéad’s words

What has been your highlight so far at Tilting the Lens?

I’m most proud of the model we are creating: a way of doing business in a global landscape, while fostering a culture rooted in trust, dignity, psychological safety, and one that only works by economically valuing disabled people.

What does success look like to you?

That our work outlives us. We work to create legacy memory and system change in companies big and small. This happens through changes in policy, behaviour, mindset and governance. Success is those levers continuing to work, evolve and adapt beyond our time with the company.

What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

Lead with trust. So much of the world leads with cynicism, and I find that when you lead with trust, people meet your expectations and you’ll always be surprised by what they achieve.

What’s one thing about your work that you wish more people understood?

Accessibility is more than ramped access to a building, or compliance in digital accessibility. It is a framework that is constantly evolving, informed by the experiences of disabled people, and one that spans across all functions of an organisation. It is everyone’s responsibility and opportunity.

Sinéad's case studies