Paul Lonergan and Phil Dawson founded IRP to address a gap in the market — organisations that needed advisory support combining genuine crisis leadership experience with frontline Financial Services resilience knowledge.
Paul Lonergan & Phil Dawson
IRP was established to support organisations facing board-level, regulatory, reputational and operational risk — particularly within regulated and systemically important sectors.
Between them, Paul and Phil bring experience across the Royal Navy, the British Army, international media — including senior resilience roles at the BBC — central government and global Financial Services. It is a combination of backgrounds rarely found in a single advisory firm, and one that gives IRP a distinctly broad perspective on crisis and resilience challenges.
Paul Lonergan
Co-Founder & Director
Background
Paul is a strategic leader in crisis management, governance and organisational resilience, with experience spanning defence, central government and regulated environments. His career began in the British Army, where he developed the crisis leadership discipline and command clarity that defines his advisory approach.
His career has been defined by high-consequence settings where governance, accountability and public trust are critical — and where the cost of poor crisis response is measured in reputational, regulatory and operational terms.
Paul specialises in translating complex risk into clear governance structures — ensuring organisations are able to respond decisively under pressure while maintaining stakeholder confidence.
Areas of Expertise
Crisis governance design, executive decision-making frameworks, board-level crisis simulation, regulatory-facing preparedness and retained crisis advisory support.
At IRP
Paul leads on crisis framework design, executive simulation programmes and retained advisory engagements — working directly with boards and senior leadership teams to build crisis capability that performs under real operational stress.
Phil Dawson
Co-Founder & Director
Background
Phil is a Financial Services resilience specialist with experience spanning global banking, asset servicing and broadcast media environments. His career began in the Royal Navy, providing the operational rigour and structured crisis thinking that underpins his resilience work.
He has held senior resilience roles at Barclays and currently serves as Vice President within the resilience function at Northern Trust, working directly within a regulated Financial Services institution to strengthen operational resilience capability. As International Resilience Manager for the BBC, he led crisis and resilience strategy across the global portfolio — overseeing incident response, business continuity and operational preparedness across major international locations.
Phil brings first-hand experience of navigating supervisory scrutiny and regulatory expectations — ensuring IRP's advisory work aligns with real-world Financial Services standards.
Areas of Expertise
Operational resilience framework implementation, Important Business Services mapping, impact tolerance alignment, business continuity governance and board-level resilience engagement within regulated institutions.
At IRP
Phil leads on operational resilience design, regulatory alignment and Financial Services advisory engagements — bringing the practical perspective of someone who has operated within regulated institutions and understands what supervisory scrutiny looks like from the inside.
Arrange a confidential discussion with Paul or Phil to assess your organisation's readiness.
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