Program Tutors

Professor Thomas Cooney:

Thomas Cooney is Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Academic Director of the DIT Institute for Minority Entrepreneurship, Adjunct Professor at the University of Turku (Finland) and Editor of the journal Small Enterprise Research. He is a former President of the International Council for Small Business (2012-13) and of the European Council for Small Business (2009-11), and was Chair of the ICSB 2014 World Entrepreneurship Conference. He is a policy advisor to governments, European Commission, OECD and other international organisations. He is a Director of 2 start-ups and works in various capacities with a range of businesses. He has researched and published widely on the topic of entrepreneurship and further details of his work can be found at www.thomascooney.com.

Chris MM Gordon

Chris is the CEO of the Irish Social Enterprise Network (Socent.ie), Managing Partner of Collaboration Ireland and BCorp Ireland. He is driven by those organisations that are Well Good.

Chris’ work focuses on leading and managing European and Nationwide projects on Social Enterprise, Social Entrepreneurship, Corporate Responsibility, Social Impact, Startups, Cooperatives, Exporting, SMEs in Ireland and leading a life of passion and purpose. He is a director of Far & Wild and Founder of Socent.ie and the Irish Export Cooperative (ExportCoop.ie). Chris is the former Director of Social Enterprise NI.

Jack Foley

Jack is an economist and trainer focused on helping entrepreneurs to use simple financial techniques to avoid going into business with flawed business models. He has designed and delivered national training initiatives, developed and brought to market financial software applications and provided innovative training and advisory services to countless entrepreneurs and their advisers/educators over the past three decades. He is an engaging presenter/guest speaker at colleges and enterprise events such as Entrepreneurs’ Day at the ICSB 2014 World Conference in Dublin. The endpoint of this effort and experience has been the launch of www.dolearnfinance.com and its sister sites www.sneakyfinance.com and www.fablinker.com

Jack is currently focused on collaborations with enterprise educators and advisers to use the sites to change the way people learn and use financial concepts and techniques in business.

Dr Anthony Paul Buckley

Anthony Paul Buckley is Assistant Head, School of Marketing in the College of Business at the Dublin Institute of Technology. He is Programme Director on the MSc (Business & Entrepreneurship). His research interests centre on the enterprise (Entrepreneurship & SME) domain with particular emphasis on Innovation Management and Evaluation. His research is published in leading international journals and in conference proceedings including: Evaluation Journal, Electronic Journal of Business Research methods (EJBRM), The ICSB World Entrepreneurship Conference, The European Conference on Research Methods (ECRM), The International Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ICIE), The European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ECIE), The International Conference for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Regional Development (ICEIRD) and The Triple Helix Association Conference (THA). Dr Buckley also won Best Paper at the European Evaluation Society Conference (EES) in 2014. In addition he was awarded a Teaching Fellowship in the College of Business in the same year to research Entrepreneurship and Innovation learning outcomes. Examples of his research output can be accessed at: http://arrow.dit.ie/fellow/45

An experienced international educator, trainer and business consultant, Dr Buckley has delivered education and training on innovation management in the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe. He is currently consulting on a European Union (EU) knowledge transfer project (ICTentr) with leading Universities in Vietnam. He holds a BSc in Management and a Masters in Arts (MA) from Trinity College Dublin, a Masters in Business Studies (MBS) from University College Dublin (UCD), a Postgraduate Certificate in 3^rd level Learning and Teaching from the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) and a PhD in management from Lancaster University (UK).

John Evoy

John is the founder of the Irish Men’s Sheds Association. Set up in 2011 it now has 420 member sheds with 10,000 participating men each week. John has won a number of awards for his work with Men’s Sheds and for his previous work in men’s well-being and social entrepreneurship, including the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Impact Award in 3013 an Irish People of the Year Award in 2015. He sits on a number of non-profit boards, including The Wheel.

Niall Minto

Niall has over 25 years of experience in implementing enterprise solutions and organisational change in the financial services sector. A certified project manager, Niall was responsible for AIB’s IT Graduate Program, and managed a number of multi-million Euro IT projects, spanning multiple geographies, jurisdictions and currencies.

Passionate about learning and teaching, Niall became a Lecturer and PhD researcher in DIT, specialising in strategy development, business models, business modelling, technology and analytics. He is committed to making learning accessible, relevant, and enjoyable for everyone.

Dr. Lucia Walsh

Lucia is a lecturer and researcher in marketing and entrepreneurship in Dublin Institute of Technology, School of Marketing.

Lucia has a strong research interest in studying entrepreneurs. Her doctoral research focused on understanding the challenges of immigrant entrepreneurs as they navigated through their start-up experiences in the new environment of Ireland. More recently, Lucia worked on a research project where she was embedded in a social enterprise for a number of months and was fortunate to observe some significant and unexpected changes. She has presented her work at numerous international conferences and published in academic journals.

Lucia is also committed to creating engaging and impactful learning environments for students with different learning styles and abilities. She is currently focusing on mastering virtual learning technologies to enliven and enhance learning experiences.