“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony" Gandhi (my hero)

Born and raised in the beautiful West of Ireland, I studied Business and Marketing at U.C.G. and U.C.D., and went on to work in various marketing roles at Unilever Bestfoods and Cadbury Schweppes.

While visiting Zimbabwe in early 2004, I had the opportunity to observe the injustices of extreme poverty first hand ... a lifechanging experiece that posed many questions and inspired me to to found The Hope Concept later that year.

The Hope Concept was to be a new bottled water brand in the Irish Market, (similar to Belu, One or Ethos Water) with all profits to be transferred to the innovative Roundabout water initiatives in Africa. Eight months into the project, a partnership between a major water producer and Irelands leading NGO, Concern, emerged ahead of me with Water for Africa. They hope to generate €500K for water projects in Erithrea over the next 18 months which is great ... and so the exploration for me goes onward. ;-) I'm now a full time social entrepreneur based in Dublin, greatfully funded by Social Entrepreneurs Ireland & Enterprise Ireland, and am very keen to launch a couple of the models I've come across on O.net in Ireland.

I was introduced to O.net a couple of months ago by an Ashoka friend and have come across so many brilliant ideas in the short time that my head often feels at bursting point. So much to do, so little time! Some of my favourites include GlobalGiving, Kiva, Microvest, World of Good, Ned, Progreso and Equop among many many others. I'm pretty new to the network, still kind of learning my way, and hoping to contribute more and more as I go.

I believe that we are all ONE, interdependent in many ways, and that poverty eradication must be at the core of sustainable social, economic, political and spiritual development. 2005 being such an important year in the fight against poverty, I have been an active campaigner and supporter of the Irish and International Make Poverty History Campaigns.

I am 27 years of age and wish to dedicate the rest of my working life to contributing in some meaningful way towards this goal of extreme poverty eradication.

A Few Interests:

• playing Gaelic Football with the best club in County Dublin :-),
• listen to many music genres across the day and love summer festivals,
• love Film (international mainly),
• reading (social enterprise related these days),
• guinness and/or nice red wine on Fridays and Saturdays!

That's me and This is me. See you Around!