12 People You Need to Know in 2016: Nancy O'Reilly

Nancy O’Reilly has made it her life’s work to educate the population about gender equality.

A licensed clinical psychologist who practiced for 25 years, O’Reilly now spends most of her time traveling to further the cause of women’s empowerment. She often is called to serve as a keynote and motivational speaker at events, and she’s written three books, including her latest titled “Leading Women: 20 Influential Women Share Their Secrets to Leadership, Business, and Life.”

O’Reilly’s goal is for men and women to stand on equal footing as leaders.  

“Women are not going to be successful in our country or any country until they sit at the table,” she says. “The goal is to have leadership in all areas, especially at the political level, the decision-maker level.”  

She’s got her work cut out for her. In the United States, only around 14 percent of the top five leadership positions in Standard & Poor’s 500 companies are held by women, according to a CNNMoney analysis. Most developed countries, O’Reilly says, count at least 20 percent of their female population in leadership roles.

“We’re sadly lacking in many, many areas,” she says. “Of course, we still don’t have equal pay, we don’t have equal parity when it comes to our salaries, and we don’t even really have an equal rights amendment on the books.”

In 2011, O’Reilly established the Women Connect4Good Inc. foundation to help women network with others and raise their status.

A vehicle to help O’Reilly spread the word, Women Connect4Good has contributed nearly $600,000 to organizations promoting the cause.

Serving as president of the foundation, O’Reilly says its tenets are those she practices and teaches other women: developing skills to increase self-confidence and advance their careers; taking responsibility for their own lives; and connecting with others to create a system of support.

“Women are starving for good mentors,” she says. “Not having the role models that we’ve needed, women have been acting as men in business, where women now can learn to act as women in business and use the skills they’re so very, very effective at: communication skills, organization skills, collaborative skills, mediation skills.

“The skills that we have, we’re not using.”

O’Reilly, who previously was married to Larry O’Reilly of O’Reilly Automotive Inc., believes fostering gender equality should start early with the education of both women and men. She says many women don’t understand how much there is to do before true equality.

“They think their mothers and their grandmothers completed all the work, and now everything’s done. But we’re still not there yet,” says O’Reilly.