Current Role

Since 2007

• Currently Director of the Centre for Research and Innovation in Learning and Teaching at National College of Ireland.  

• National College of Ireland’s Director of Learning and Teaching.   

Business History

• Founder and CEO of AV Edge a learning media production company that specialised in educational television and multimedia production.
• Established in 1996, AV Edge was a UCD campus company winning the first development programme award and subsequently attracting three rounds of external investment.
• In 1999 AV Edge and its US subsidiary established a niche market using multimedia for learning on financial products.
• In Ireland AV Edge was also renowned for its work in adult literacy television.
• In 2004, ThirdForce, Ireland’s largest e-learning company bought AV Edge as part of its strategy to enter the basic skills market.
• From 2004 I worked as head the new Skills for Life Division at ThirdForce plc reporting at board level and successfully overseeing business expansion in new sectors of the UK market. 
• In 2007 I decided to take up my current role in NCI.

Work at UCD

• I studied science in UCD and following the H Dip Ed, I was asked to stay on at the Education Department to work on educational media production. 
• Subsequently the college established the Audio Visual Centre where I was Head of Media Production. 
• I was involved in much pioneering work on the use of technology in education including the use of satellites for live international lectures, early multimedia innovations and the early application of Internet technologies to education.
• In  1991 I established a unique partnership between UCD and RTE to produce educational television programmes for broadcast.  In effect the Audio visual Centre acted as an outsourced educational programmes unit for RTE. 
• I was trained by RTE as a television director and I have devised, produced and directed over one hundred broadcast programmes (see details elsewhere).

Early Background

I was reared in the Phoenix Park Dublin where my father was a gate keeper.  I went to school in CBS North Brunswick Street and from an early age I worked part-time in Dublin Zoo.