Belfast lawyer Imelda McMillan has been elected chairperson of Women in Business (WiB).

Ms McMillan, a former president of the Law Society of Northern Ireland, is a director of O’Reilly Stewart Solicitors, where she leads the property department.

She specialises in reconstruction of title, house building developments, apartment schemes including site acquisitions and all aspects of property law.

Ms McMillan said: “The key objective of Women in Business is to create a new economy.

“This means a faster growing, more innovative and flexible economy which is internationally competitive and which sees as many men as women in all sectors and at all levels.

“To date we have seen a strong increase in the numbers of women reaching the top of their field but there is still a long way to go before the gender imbalance is redressed.

“While the imbalance remains, Northern Ireland’s ambitions to become internationally competitive are being held back. It is unsustainable to try to grow an economy while keeping a large section of a talented and qualified community at a distance from it.”

Ms McMillan graduated from Queen’s University Belfast, where she studied law, in 1987.

She spent two years in community work in West Belfast as a project co-ordinator before becoming a trainee solicitor to Garrett O’Reilly of O’Reilly Stewart Solicitors in 1989.

She graduated from the Institute of Professional Legal Studies in 1991.