Archives: Awardees

Former Leinster captain Leo Cullen first appeared in blue in 1995 but made his senior debut during the interprovincial and Heineken Cup matches of the 1998/99 season.

In 2001/02 the Celtic League appeared on the scene and it coincided with one of the best seasons in Cullen’s fledgling career and a fantastic year for Leinster that saw them capture the title. That summer he was included in the Ireland squad to tour New Zealand, appearing for the national side in June against the All Blacks.

The Wicklow man gained 32 Irish caps during his career and had the honour of captaining his side during the 2011 Rugby World Cup. 

Cullen also enjoyed huge success at Leicester Tigers as the English side took home the Guinness Premiership and EDF Energy Cup in 2007. The following season saw Cullen tempted back to the Leinster set-up and under coaches Michael Cheika and Joe Schmidt, the influential lock played a vital role in transforming Leinster from nearly-men to consistent performers and determined winners. 

Early signs were shown when the side won the Celtic League that season. For 2008/09, Cullen was handed the captain’s armband. Nine months later, he was raising the Heineken Cup trophy aloft after a memorable win over Leicester at Murrayfield.

Further success in Europe would follow in 2011, when Cullen captained Leinster to an astonishing comeback win at the Millennium Stadium, and in 2012 when his team retained their title. In lifting the trophy at Twickenham, Cullen became the first man to captain a team to three Heineken Cup Final successes.

His final two seasons as a player saw Cullen lift three more trophies with Leinster. The Amlin Challenge Cup and RaboDirect PRO12 titles were won on two consecutive weekends at the end of May in 2013 and in Cullen’s final appearance for the province he lifted the RaboDirect PRO12 title for a second season in succession, alongside fellow departee Brian O’Driscoll.

With his years of experience in the game, Cullen was asked to join the Leinster backroom staff by head coach Matt O’Connor after his retirement and he became the Leinster forwards coach in July 2014.

Cullen was appointed Leinster Rugby Head Coach in August 2015 and led the province to the top of the Guinness PRO12 table and to the PRO12 Final. Having reached the semi-finals of both the Guinness PRO12 and the Champions Cup, a year later in 2018, in his third season, Cullen became the first man to win a Champions Cup title as a player and as a head coach as he presided over a first ever Guinness PRO14 and Champions Cup double for Leinster.

He was awarded the Guinness PRO14 Coach of the Year Award in recognition of the team’s achievements that season.

Since then Leinster Rugby, under his stewardship, have added further titles and have won a record fourth Guinness PRO14 title in succession.

Fiona McEntee is an award-winning, nationally recognized immigration attorney. She is the Founder and Managing Attorney of McEntee Law Group in Chicago. Fiona and her team of passionate advocates represent individuals and families, as well as the world’s leading musicians, artists, athletes, innovative entrepreneurs/startups, and multinational and U.S. companies.

Fiona is also the Chair of the Media & Advocacy Committee for AILA National, the bar association with over 15,000 immigration lawyer members. She regularly appears on national/international media including MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, BBC, and RTÉ. She also counsels other immigration attorneys about leveraging the media to fiercely advocate for clients.

Fiona has particular expertise with the “extraordinary ability” O-1 visa and with immigration options for startups. Fiona was recently asked to submit a statement to Congress – the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship – on the need for a startup visa and how the outdated U.S. immigration policies push entrepreneurs and startups to other countries.

Fiona has won many awards including the ISBA Elmer Gertz Award and the Chicago-Kent College of Law Outstanding Pro Bono Service Award (O’Hare Airport Attorneys -Muslim Travel Ban). In 2019, Fiona was inducted into the Irish American Hall of Fame in the Irish American Heritage Center in Chicago.

Last year, Fiona wrote and published her first book – Our American Dream – a children’s book on immigration. As a mom of two young children, an immigrant, and an immigration lawyer who fights for justice every day, she wrote Our American Dream to explain the importance of a diverse and welcoming America.

Olivia is a portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan Asset Management (JPMAM) in London.  She joined the firm on the technology graduate programme in 1998, moving to Asset Management in 2004 and is a CFA Charterholder.  An expert in short term fixed income markets, she is currently a member of the Bank of England Money Market Committee as well as the Bank of England SONIA Stakeholder Advisory Group and chaired the Investment Committee of the Institutional Money Market Fund Association.  Olivia has a passion for social responsibility, both from a business and a personal perspective; she sits on the JPMAM Sustainable Investment Leadership Team, the JPMAM Philanthropy & Employee Engagement and Volunteering Committee, and is current Chair of the CFA UK Inclusion & Diversity Committee.  Olivia has also worked with organisations and charities across the globe to champion equity and improve opportunities for people and communities including in the UK, Detroit and her own home neighbourhood on the Northside of Dublin.

In 2019 she was a recipient of Investment Week’s Women in Investment Fund Manager of the Year, and in 2020 was named Women in Finance Wealth Manager of the Year, and #16 on Yahoo Finance’s HERoes Women Future Leaders List.

Dr Mike Ryan has been at the forefront of managing acute risks to global health for nearly 25 years. He served as Assistant Director-General for Emergency Preparedness and Response in WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme from 2017 to 2019.

Dr Ryan first joined WHO in 1996, with the newly established unit to respond to emerging and epidemic disease threats. He has worked in conflict-affected countries and led many responses to high-impact epidemics. He is a founding member of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), which has aided the response to hundreds of disease outbreaks around the world. He served as Coordinator of Epidemic Response (2000-2003), Operational Coordinator of WHO’s response to the SARS outbreak (2003), and as WHO’s Director of Global Alert and Response (2005-2011).

He was a Senior Advisor on Polio Eradication for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative from 2013 to 2017, deploying to countries in the Middle East.

He completed medical training at the National University of Ireland, Galway, a Master’s in Public Health at University College Dublin, and specialist training in communicable disease control at the Health Protection Agency in London and the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training.

Teresa Lambe is an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator in the Medical Sciences Division at the University of Oxford. She completed her graduate studies at University College Dublin, Ireland, before continuing her post-doctoral training in 2002 under the guidance of Prof. Richard Cornall and Prof. Sir John Bell at the University of Oxford, moving to the Jenner Institute in 2009. 

Her chief research interests involve collaborative ‘team science’ approaches to move from basic insights to globally impactful healthcare interventions against emerging and outbreak pathogens, in the shortest possible time. Her specific areas of expertise include zoonotic disease description and clinical trial assessment of interventions, and she continues to work on vaccines against globally important diseases including Ebola, Influenza, Nipah, MERS, and Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever.  

She is one of the Principal Investigators overseeing the University’s COVID-19 vaccine programme. In January 2020, she co-designed the vaccine before leading the pivotal pre-clinical studies required to allow clinical trials to commence in April 2020. She then played an integral role during the clinical trials overseeing the immunological assessment of vaccine responses and supporting regulatory approval of the vaccine in late 2020. The vaccine has now been delivered to nearly half a billion people worldwide and has played a pivotal role in the fight against the virus. 

Born in 1950 in Sligo, Neil Jordan began his career as a writer. His first book of stories, Night In Tunisia (1976) won the Guardian Fiction prize. Since then he has published eight novels, The Past (1979), The Dream Of A Beast (1983), Sunrise With Seamonster (1994), Shade (2005), Mistaken (2011), The Drowned Detective (2015), Carnivalesque (2017), and most recently The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small. In 1982 Jordan wrote and directed his first feature film Angel and has written, directed and produced more than fifteen films, including Company of Wolves (1984), Mona Lisa (1986), The Crying Game (1992), Interview With The Vampire (1994), Michael Collins (1996), The Butcher Boy (1997), The End Of The Affair (1999), In Dreams (1999), Breakfast On Pluto (2005), Ondine (2009), Byzantium (2013) and Greta (2018). He has also written, directed and produced the two-time Emmy winning television series The Borgias (2011 – 2013). His films have been honoured with numerous awards worldwide, including an Oscar (Best Original Screenplay – The Crying Game), BAFTAs, Golden Globes, A Golden Lion from The Venice Film Festival (Michael Collins) and a Silver Bear from the Berlinale.

Sally is an award-winning journalist and photographer currently focused on migration, conflict and humanitarian crises. Her work has been published in the New York Times, the Guardian, Time and CNN. She has previously lectured at London College of Communication and New York University and has mentored at the Refugee Journalism Project.

She has worked with VICE, VICE News, CNN International, the Financial Times Magazine, TIME, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, BBC, the Washington Post, the Irish Times, the Guardian, the New York Times, Magnum Photos, Channel 4 News, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, NBC News, Maclean’s, the Sunday Times, Newsweek, RTE, ELLE, Marie Claire, ZEIT Online, Voice of America, the Independent, the Telegraph, Deutsche Welle, IRIN, the New Statesman, the New Internationalist, the National, the Huffington Post and ITV News, and had stories and photojournalism republished on six continents by outlets including Pacific Standard, National Geographic, NPR, the Times of India, Euronews, the Christian Science Monitor, Sky News, the Observer, the Globe and Mail, ABC News, Forbes and TeleSUR English, among many others.

HEFAT certified, Sally has reported from countries including Nigeria, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, France, Germany, Belgium, Burkina Faso, Ireland, the UK, Lebanon, Jordan, DR Congo, Panama, Cambodia, the Gambia, Liberia, Hungary, Luxembourg, Rwanda, Malawi, Ethiopia, Madagascar, the US, Italy, Malta, Kenya and Uganda. Her writing has been translated into nine languages and she has appeared as a guest on national and international media. She is a member of the Frontline Freelance Register and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Sally has a law degree from University College Dublin and an MSc in International Politics from Trinity College, Dublin, where her thesis was on post-conflict societies and theories of civil war resolution. She has worked as a trainer at the BBC Academy, a visiting lecturer at London College of Communication and New York University, and volunteered as a mentor for the Refugee Journalism Project.

Mark is an explorer, author and motivational speaker who became the first blind man to race to the South Pole. He lost his sight in his early 20s. He suffered paralysis after a fall in 2010 and has had to rebuild his life again. Now, he is working to help cure paralysis. He is the founder of the global race, Run in the Dark, which will be a virtual event this year.

Unbroken by blindness in 1998, Mark became an adventure athlete competing in ultra-endurance races across deserts, mountains, and the polar ice caps including being the first blind person to race to the South Pole. He also won silver and bronze medals for rowing at the Commonwealth Games and set up a motivational speaking business (www.markpollock.com).

In 2010 a fall from a second story window nearly killed him. Mark broke his back and the damage to his spinal cord left him paralysed. Now he is on a new expedition, this time to cure paralysis in our lifetime by exploring the intersection where humans and technology collide.

As a speaker, Mark is best known for his 2018 TED Talk focused on resolving the tension between acceptance and hope (go.ted.com/markandsimone) delivered jointly with his fiancée, Simone George. It gathered over 1.5 million views in its first 6 months online and has been translated into 12 languages. He has inspired millions of people in hundreds of organisations and is a Davos, World Economic Forum, InnoTown, F.ounders, EG and Wired speaker.

Co-Founder of the global running series called Run in the Dark (www.runinthedark.org), Mark has been selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader and is a former member of the Global Futures Council on Human Enhancement. He is a UBS Global Visionary, is on the Board of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation (USA) and is a Wings for Life Ambassador (Europe).

In addition, Mark is the subject of the acclaimed documentaries ‘Blind Man Walking’ and ‘Unbreakable – The Mark Pollock Story’, he has been awarded honorary doctorates by The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and also from Queens University Belfast. And, he holds a diploma in Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century from Harvard University, degrees from Trinity College Dublin and The Smurfit Business School.

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Sharon is the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland with responsibility for leading its financial stability; economics and statistics and financial operations directorates. She joined the Central Bank in 1996 as an economist in the monetary policy division and was acting Governor in 2019.

Sharon was appointed Deputy Governor, Central Banking on 1 March 2016. She is an ex officio member of the Central Bank Commission and the Governor’s Alternate on the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB). Sharon is responsible for leading the financial stability; economics and statistics and financial operations directorates of the Central Bank. She is also the Chair of the ECB Budget Committee (BuCom) having been appointed by the ECB Governing Council in December 2016.

Sharon was Acting Governor from 1 June 2019 to 31 August 2019. She was previously a member of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) and Alternate Member of the Supervisory Board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). She has chaired a number of European Committees including being Chair of the ECB High Level Group on Non-Performing Loans (NPLs), Chair of the European Banking Authority’s (EBA) Consumer Protection Group and Vice-Chair of the EBA Standing Committee on Consumer Protection and Financial Innovation.

Sharon joined the Central Bank in 1996 as an Economist in the Monetary Policy Division and has held a range of senior positions as head of division. From February 2013 to August 2014, she held the statutory position of Registrar of Credit Unions and from April 2014 to May 2016 was Director of Credit Institutions. Prior to joining the Central Bank, Sharon lectured in economics at the National University of Ireland Maynooth.

Sharon holds a B.A. in Economics and Politics and a M.A. in Economics from University College Dublin and a Diploma in Company Direction from the Institute of Directors. In 2019, she was admitted to the Institute of Directors in London as a Chartered Director.  In 2020, she was appointed as an Adjunct Professor of Economics in Trinity College Dublin.

Cormac is a biotech entrepreneur, manages a biotech investment portfolio and is involved with two angel investment groups in Ireland. He was the founder of Biotrin, a virology diagnostics company, and Argutus Medical, and is currently Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine and Medicinal Chemistry at UCD.

Dr Cormac Kilty who was born in Cork and following his early education in Cork moved to Dublin where he attended CBC Monkstown.

Dr Kilty next attended UCD to study science where he reached two milestones, obtaining his BSc degree and meeting his future wife, Anne. He subsequently went on to obtain a PhD in Zoology and Biochemistry from University College Dublin, Ireland.

Dr. Kilty has carried out post-doctoral research in protein chemistry and immunology at the University of Texas at Austin and at University College Dublin.

His subsequent career exemplifies that of the rare individual with a passion for science married to keen business acumen. It is often said that scientists and doctors make poor businessmen and managers, Dr Kilty has proven that is not the case.

He joined the Diagnostics Division of Baxter Healthcare in 1986 and served as the Head of their European Research and Development group in Switzerland from 1987 to 1991.

He was founder and CEO of Biotrin Technologies Ltd. in Dublin from 1992-08, founder and past Chairman of Opsona Theraputics, Dublin 2004-09 and founder and CEO of Argutus Medical, specialising in the development of novel biomarkers of kidney damage. He is the founder and recent past Chair of the Irish BioIndustry Association.

More recently he has served as the Chief Technical Officer of EKF Diagnostics and a Director of Nexvet Bioparma.

He was a previous Director of NovaUCD and has received a number of prestigious awards over his career including the Biolink Life Science Achievement Award which was presented to him by Mary McAleese in 2007.

Despite the successful career in biotechnology he has maintained strong links with UCD. Dr Kilty represents all that we strive for in research excellence and innovation. He is Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine and Medicinal Chemistry at UCD, and also has strong ties to UCD hockey having served as its President since 1998.

In December 2013 Dr Kilty received an Honorary degree of Doctor of Science from UCD.