GILLIAN Kelleher is the vice president of food safety and quality assurance for Wegmans Food Markets, Inc., a major regional supermarket chain headquartered in Rochester, New York that operates 77 stores in five states and employs over 40,000 people. The company had sales of $5.6 billion in 2010.  

A native of Co. Cork, and possessing a degree in food science from University College Cork, Kelleher has worked in the food industry in Ireland, the U.K, France and the U.S. for over 20 years. She started with Wegmans in 1997 as a quality systems manager.

Kelleher and her husband, Martin, also from Cork, have two sons, Conor and Kevin.  She travels home twice a year, and has several siblings also based in the U.S.
“I love the Irish sense of humor, Irish culture, literature, history, sports, music and dance, which is inevitable with three sisters here teaching Irish dancing which we all learned back home and which was nurtured by my mum,” says Kelleher.

“As a student, I worked for a summer on Nantucket and it was there that I first got to learn what living and working here was like.  The can do positive attitude was/is so amazing here.

“Who would have thought that an Irish student like me could hold down jobs in a hotel, restaurant, gift shop and also guide and park planes and announce flight departures at the airport as a customer reservations agent, all during that same summer? Only in America!”

Kelleher is a member of New England University College Cork Alumni Association and the Irish Network Boston.
 

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