PROFESSOR Keith Goffin

DR. Loren Duffy

Loren helps individuals, teams and organisations achieve high performance. His dedication to understanding how people develop, and transform was sparked at a young age by the imaginative work of Carl Jung. Ever since, he has sought out and worked with the major pioneers of psychology.

Loren believes that aligning the physical, mental, emotional and imaginative aspects of self is the key to creativity, self-renewal, and sustainable performance. Integrating neuroscience, social psychology, and behavioural science he takes a rigorous, but practical approach to how we can better organise our companies and our lives. He has facilitated major culture change for companies that are growing and seek sustainability, and for dying companies that need to radically turnaround. He most often starts with the top team.

Loren consults on creative projects in entertainment, influenced by his Hollywood film, music and advertising backgrounds. In sport he coaches elite talent who compete to win and strive to develop personally. Loren lectures in a wide variety of learning and development topics, drawing on his experiences working with street gangs of LA, conflict in the north of Ireland, and his work with the United Nations. He holds a BA, MSc, and PhD in Psychology, focusing his doctoral research on individual-organisational transformation for companies facing complex change.

He is a master diver, music lover, and thought provocateur.

Valerie O’Riordan

Valerie is a Leadership Facilitator, Strategic Change Consultant and Executive Coach. She has a wealth of experience working in organisational development both at leadership team and individual level. She has held senior HR leadership roles for over 25 years in large multi nationals such as Diageo, Nestlé, and Rowntree in Europe, Asia and Africa. Most recently Valerie was the Global Organisation Effectiveness Director for Diageo.

Valerie is known for combining intellectual rigour with a practical and commercial approach to deliver sustainable change. She has a track record of delivering organisational growth through complex transformational change and cost reduction.

Valerie creates open and trusting relationships which underpin her interventions. She identifies and builds on the strengths of leaders, enhancing their self-insight, enabling them to move to positive sustainable change. She is known for coaching with purpose in order to stretch individuals to elicit their greatness.

Ciaran Black

Ciaran has extensive experience creating innovative products, services and business models. He has held roles as Innovation Director and Head of Strategy, and in M&A and strategy execution in Telecoms, eCommerce, Renewable Energy, Forestry and Recreation.

For Coillte he created a new B2C recreation business; helped scale a technology start-up apply data analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) to forestry operations; and developed the wind energy strategy that shifted the business model from a passive player to a full-scale Wind Farm Developer. Ciaran successfully led the team that negotiated the ‘make or break’ interconnection agreements for Digicel in four new countries.

Ciaran’s background is business strategy and innovation (MSc in Strategy and a BBS in Business). He regularly presents at leadership conferences, is an associate of St. Gallen’s Institute of Technology – Business Model Innovation Lab and a member of the Irish Research & Development Group (IRDG) on Design Thinking.

Ciaran, a lifelong rugby player, recognises the importance of timing and contends he could’ve been a pro. He settles for wins at work and vicariously through others as Honorary Treasurer of Ireland’s oldest rugby club.

DR. Evy Sakellario

Evy is an innovation-marketing expert. She has combined consulting and executive training with top multinational and non-profit organisations with University teaching and research. Previously, she had a senior marketing and innovation business career at Unilever UK, and Unilever Greece-Cyprus.

Evy is masterful in eliciting new customer insights and translating them into breakthrough concepts and customer-centric innovation strategies. Her focus is helping CMOs/Marketing managers to gain new perspectives, to uncover breakthrough customer insights and to develop competitive marketing and innovation strategies by integrating advanced theory with business practice.

Evy is senior lecturer at Kingston University and associate faculty of design, media and management at Buckinghamshire University. She has done extensive work with the Innovation Centres in London, Amsterdam, Brussels and Milan.

She holds a DBA from the University of Surrey, UK and an MBA from Loyola University of Chicago, USA.