Q&Alumni

Nóirín Mosley (Halligan) was born in Dublin, Ireland. Having worked in the insurance and disability sectors in Ireland, she took off for sunny Thailand to work with Sony Asia in product marketing in 1996. From there, she made her way to Melbourne Australia via Papua New Guinea and Sydney. In 2019 she started Educate to Elevate, an online learning business, with her good friend and business partner Jenny Boymal. Educate to Elevate specialises in visually engaging online onboarding programmes for all industries.

Dr Conor Delaney, MD, PhD is a colorectal surgeon and President and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic Florida Region, he lives in south-east Florida with his family.

Dr Helen McBreen is a partner at Atlantic Bridge, a global growth equity technology firm that announced the launch of the University Bridge Fund II in May. This fund is focused on scaling and commercialising research from Ireland’s third-level institutions, including UCD, into the next generation of deep tech companies with global potential. Dr McBreen graduated from UCD with a first-class BE in Electronic and Electrical Engineering.

As we gear up for the announcement of our 2021 UCD Alumni Awardees in September, we spoke to the 2020 winners about their time at UCD, their careers, and the advice they have for students and graduates. These nine awardees are the epitome of passion, success, and ongoing support in their own communities as well as to our community of nearly 300,000 alumni worldwide. To see their full bios as well as the 2021 winners in September, you can visit the Alumni Awards website.

Dinuka Tharangi Jayaweera is a Business Analyst at Sysco LABS Sri Lanka and Social Media Chair at IEEE Young Professionals She graduated from UCD with a BSc in Computer Science in 2017 and is based in Sri Lanka.

Barra Fitzgibbon is a UCD Arts graduate who went on to study law and become a solicitor. While working as a solicitor he discovered his passion lay in media and communications and he became a Channel 4 broadcaster. Barra has also worked as a voiceover artist and lent his voice to ad campaigns for 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures and, most importantly, Kerrygold Butter. Following a near-death experience after contracting COVID-19, Barra changed career again and now is a conversation specialist working with individuals, corporates, institutions, charities and the NHS, delivering a wide range of talks, programmes and workshops.

Yaxin (Nicole) Li is a UCD Smurfit Business School graduate. Following the completion of her Master’s Degree in Marketing in 2019 she moved to Shanghai to work for Enterprise Ireland. She still misses the comparative peace and quiet of Ireland every day.

Niall Norton is a UCD BComm graduate. He has a very successful career in the telecommunications sector and is CEO of Openet (an Amdocs Company), a world leading Digital BSS company that provides data management solutions. When Niall is not working, he enjoys a little cycling, swimming, science fiction and not surprisingly taking old computers apart. 

Kara Kelly is a Business and Law (BBL) graduate from the Sutherland School of Law.  She has spent over 8 years working in television production and currently works as a Freelance Assistant Producer & Reporter with RTÉ Sport, Ireland’s national broadcaster.

2020 marked the 50th anniversary of Michael Coleman’s graduation from UCD with a BA in History. Michael retired from a successful academic career at The University of Jyväskylä in Finland in 2010. He is the author of the book “American Indians, the Irish, and Government Schooling: A Comparative Study”. He lives in Finland with his wife Sirkka.