Danielle Ryan

Who is Danielle Ryan?

Danielle Ryan is an Irish business woman, entrepreneur and philanthropist. She is the daughter of Capt. Cathal Ryan and granddaughter of Tony Ryan, founder of Ryanair. She trained in acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

In February 2011 at the UN General Assembly in New York, Ryan announced that the Cathal Ryan Trust, set up in memory of her late father, was giving $14 million to help children in Sri Lanka following the bitter war which ended in May 2009 after 26 years. The donation is being channelled through UNICEF Ireland and is one of the biggest personal donations the UN Body has ever received. It will fund schools and maternity hospitals in Four of the worst effected towns in the main post-conflict area in the North of Sri Lanka.

Speaking at the ECOSOC event in New York, Danielle said "this idea was the vision of my late father, as a result of his time spent as a young man in Sri Lanka in the late 1970s. As a pilot based there for a number of years, he got to know the country very well and was always humbled by the innate elegance of the people and their unrelenting determination to be educated."