Our Speakers

Helene Hugel

Helene is the CEO and Artistic Director of the Social Innovation, Helium Arts. 

In 2023, Helene was selected for the Social Entrepreneurs Changing Ireland Accelerator initiative and has received numerous awards and accolades for her work with Helium Arts.

In 2024 alone, Helium Arts was shortlisted for the Business & Finance Awards Social Impact Award, the Business to Arts Awards, and the Irish Healthcare Centre Awards. The organisation also won Westmeath Group of the Year (Children and Youth Category) at the Westmeath Cathaoirleach Awards and the Arts & Culture National Lottery Good Causes Award 2024. Additionally, Helene Hugel was honored as the WMB Female Entrepreneur of the Year 2024.

Gavan Drohan

Mr. Drohan is Head of Entrepreneurship in Portal, part of Trinity Innovation & Enterprise. In this role, he is responsible for the delivery of a full programme of activities to encourage and support innovation, including incubation and acceleration programmes such as LaunchBox for students at the start of their entrepreneurial journey through to later stage pan European startups programmes supported by EIT and a design accelerator for the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland. His background encompasses telecomms, innovation management and as a startup founder. Prior to joining Trinity, he was a co-founder of Red Planet, an innovation consultancy which was acquired by Deloitte in 2017. 

Cian McGlynn

Cian is a final year Global business student at Trinity College Dublin. He participated in the Launchbox accelerator programme with his social innovation 'GiveDish'. GiveDish was a social enterprise that worked with restaurants and cafes to tackle food insecurity, both nationally and globally

He went on to become President of Trinity Entrepreneurial Society and is in the Schwarzman Scholar 2026 Cohort!

Diane Hurley

Diane is a programme manager at New Frontiers Dublin, a nationwide programme for startup founders, who organise New Frontiers Accelerate - a residential programme for founders to explore entrepreneurship. 

She is a DCU BA graduate of Applied Languages, German and Spanish, has a post-graduate in Entrepreneurship from TCD and she completed the Female High Fliers Programme with DCU Ryan Academy. She has worked with TUD across enterprise and incubator projects, before becoming programme manager at New Frontiers.