Paul Handrick
Paul Handrick is known as the bee guy, having founded the first and only private sanctuary in the world wholly dedicated to native wild bees — no hives, no honey. The Bee Sanctuary of Ireland is a 12-acre wetland area in Wicklow with lakes and ponds untouched for almost a decade and home to frogs, newts, waterbirds and rare wildflowers. Beginning in 2012, Paul and his wife Clare-Louise founded the Sanctuary and use it as a demonstration of environmental restoration and sustainability.
Deirdre Whitfield
Deirdre Whitfield is the Community Enterprise Development Officer at Wicklow County Council. Most of her work is with the local Community Development Committee, overseeing the community and economic development within the county through the Local Economic and Community Plan (LECP). The present plan involves social enterprise as a goal all unto itself, and as such, Deirdre is involved in developing and raising awareness of social enterprise within Wicklow and supporting actions.
Brian Carty
Brian Carty is the CEO of County Wicklow Partnership which in 2019 launched its social enterprise strategy for the county. Within this, several actions were identified to support social enterprise meaningfully. County Wicklow Partnership offers a multitude of programmes, including SICAP (providing bottom-up support for disadvantaged communities and individuals), LEADER (supporting the development of rural enterprise and rural communities) and the Rural Youth Training Programme (supporting young people who wish to be involved in social enterprise).
Daniel Halpin
Daniel Halpin is the founder of Rewild Adventures. This social enterprise takes groups out into the wild and weaves nature, adventure and therapy together with storytelling to create experiences that shift the dial for teams. Daniel’s background is in the events industry, and he’s tied this experience to his love for being in the wild and prior work for entrepreneurs. These adventures will all hold a social core, utilising the money spent by corporate groups on events and experiences to fund sub-programmes for groups like front-line workers and other key workers who have suffered through the pandemic.
Richard Gavin
Richard Gavin is the Assistant Principal Officer for the Department of Rural and Community Development within Wicklow. The department is responsible for the National Social Enterprise Policy published last year, the three main objectives of which are creating awareness of social enterprise, supporting the growth of social enterprise and policy alignment.
Devin Reardon
Devin Reardon is the founder of Find Your Tribe, an early-stage social enterprise planning to enable ‘positive action through experience’ — bringing people together through activities rather than networking. He believes experience-based socialising is the most natural way to bring people together and create community. From his own experience, Devin understands that engaging in passions and interests, especially in a community atmosphere, can seriously help to remedy mental health difficulties. He finds this to be a particularly meaningful social aim in a time when Ireland is experiencing a mental health crisis.
Paul McDermott
Paul McDermott is the founder and CEO of Clutch Academy Ireland, a sports and recreational coaching company working with school-aged children, Tusla youth groups and men with Down syndrome. The social enterprise teaches inclusivity and resilience through sport, providing fun training sessions & targeted physical activity programmes across the county for all ages, levels of ability and sporting types, focusing on the character-building side of sport & games.
Avril Bailey
Avril Bailey is the County Wicklow PPN representative on the County Wicklow Partnership Board and a member of the Lackan Community Development Association. Avril is also the founder of Community in Mind. This social enterprise aims to support organisations in the NGO sector to support and maintain the psychological health of staff and employees affordably and sustainably. She is an experienced Senior Community Manager with a demonstrated history of working in education, training and advocacy in the community and voluntary sector for over 20 years. She maintains an interest in volunteering and community development.
Laura Holly
Laura Holly is the founder of Sugarloaf Botanics. This social enterprise aims to reconnect people with the value of local plants and our native habitat through formulating natural skincare from plants organically grown or wildcrafted in Wicklow. With a background in medicine, Laura understands the value of carefully considered and consciously created ingredients. She believes that the more people start to grow herbs and plants, the better it will be for the body and the planet. The emphasis is on what’s in season. The longer-term vision is to improve the area's biodiversity by rewilding large tracts of land and hosting workshops and foraging walks to reconnect people with Wicklow’s wealth of therapeutic plants.
Evelyn Murray
Evelyn Murray is the Rural Development Officer at County Wicklow Partnership. She primarily works on the LEADER programme, specialising in the social enterprise development measure. The 2014-2020 run of the programme has just topped the million mark for the amount invested into social enterprise.
Ahmed Mu’Azzam and Hugh Weldon
Ahmed Mu’Azzam and Hugh Weldon are co-founders of Evocco, an app which empowers consumers to make more sustainable food choices by tracking the climate impact of their food purchases. By snapping photographs of food shopping receipts and learning the carbon footprint and nutrition scores of different food items (provided by Eaternity, a leading life cycle assessment data company based in Switzerland), consumers can find the most nutritious food for the lowest climate impact.
Laura McDermott
Laura McDermott is the Director of Academic Experience and Innovation at the IE Business School in Madrid. She designs sustainable innovation projects with educational institutions, startups and corporates, specifically from a behavioural lens. In 2018 she designed the global Red Innova community, which facilitates the scaling of social startups.
Peir Leonard
Peir Leonard is the local County Councillor in Arklow municipal district. He works with the suicide prevention charity Talk To Tom, a community-based social enterprise providing mental health awareness and bereavement support. Their services include one-to-one, group, and family counselling and therapy sessions. Child and adolescent services, bereavement support and community outreach programmes.
David and Anna O’Keeffe
David and Anna O’Keeffe are co-founders of the early-stage social enterprise Ushanka Kvass. They hope to bring the traditional Baltic drink made from fermenting rye bread, kvass, to Ireland. They aim to create a cross-cultural appreciation for the drink and to support local artists and sellers by stocking their kvass in local shops and displaying work by local Irish artists and writers on the packaging.
Lorraine Bowen
Lorraine Bowen is the Head of Innovation and Impact at The Entrepreneurs Academy in Ireland. Beginning her career as a textile design and manufacturing entrepreneur, she has over ten years of experience. With this expertise, she now develops partnerships with government agencies and corporate clients and designs Entrepreneur Development programmes to ensure Irish SMEs start strong and achieve their business ambitions.
John Kearns
John Kearns is Chief Executive of Partas, managing four Enterprise Centres, a training division and a micro-loan fund. He has led research on a national and EU level into many areas of social policy, particularly innovation, entrepreneurship and social enterprise. He has also worked with partners throughout Central and Eastern Europe in developing their social enterprise policies and practices. He has held advisory roles at local, national and international levels and is currently driving a new collaboration initiative in Tallaght called the ‘Social + Local Enterprise Alliance’. He has a successful track record as an entrepreneur in his own right in a variety of sectors, most notably the music business. He holds an MBA with a specialisation in Entrepreneurship and serves as an expert advisor to the European Commission on social enterprise.
Rachel Tyrell
Rachel Tyrell is the founder of the social enterprise The Colour Club, a newly opened creativity and wellness centre for kids and their grown-ups, providing experience-based activities for families within Wicklow. People can learn, explore, and experience art, crafts, design, music and movement in a space that is intentionally unique, visually stimulating and immersive. Rachel has used her design education to help her think differently and think outside the box.
Rose Doss
Rose Doss is the founder of the Cracked Cup Coffee Truck, a social enterprise borne out of her passion for empowering young people as a mental health occupational therapist, alongside a decade-long career in the hospitality industry. She has partnered with local mental health agencies to provide structured employment opportunities for vulnerable young people. The premise of Rose’s social enterprise is that while you’re tending to your well-being with your neighbourly coffee break from your home office, you’re directly investing in young people's futures.
Laura Dennehy
Laura Dennehy is the Country Manager for Enactus Ireland. This international non-profit organisation brings together student, academic and business leaders committed to using the power of entrepreneurial action to improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need.
Kate Hennessy
Kate Hennessy is the creator and owner of Purple Bombshell Drama, an early-stage social enterprise looking to educate people on disability awareness and the LGBTQIA+ community through specialised drama workshops. The notion is that when people are out of their seats interacting with each other, they’ll feel more comfortable asking the difficult questions they might not in other scenarios.
Social Entrepreneurs
Paul Handrick
Paul Handrick is known as the bee guy, having founded the first and only private sanctuary in the world wholly dedicated to native wild bees — no hives, no honey. The Bee Sanctuary of Ireland is a 12-acre wetland area in Wicklow with lakes and ponds untouched for almost a decade and home to frogs, newts, waterbirds and rare wildflowers. Beginning in 2012, Paul and his wife Clare-Louise founded the Sanctuary and use it as a demonstration of environmental restoration and sustainability.
Deirdre Whitfield
Deirdre Whitfield is the Community Enterprise Development Officer at Wicklow County Council. Most of her work is with the local Community Development Committee, overseeing the community and economic development within the county through the Local Economic and Community Plan (LECP). The present plan involves social enterprise as a goal all unto itself, and as such, Deirdre is involved in developing and raising awareness of social enterprise within Wicklow and supporting actions.
Brian Carty
Brian Carty is the CEO of County Wicklow Partnership which in 2019 launched its social enterprise strategy for the county. Within this, several actions were identified to support social enterprise meaningfully. County Wicklow Partnership offers a multitude of programmes, including SICAP (providing bottom-up support for disadvantaged communities and individuals), LEADER (supporting the development of rural enterprise and rural communities) and the Rural Youth Training Programme (supporting young people who wish to be involved in social enterprise).
Daniel Halpin
Daniel Halpin is the founder of Rewild Adventures. This social enterprise takes groups out into the wild and weaves nature, adventure and therapy together with storytelling to create experiences that shift the dial for teams. Daniel’s background is in the events industry, and he’s tied this experience to his love for being in the wild and prior work for entrepreneurs. These adventures will all hold a social core, utilising the money spent by corporate groups on events and experiences to fund sub-programmes for groups like front-line workers and other key workers who have suffered through the pandemic.
Richard Gavin
Richard Gavin is the Assistant Principal Officer for the Department of Rural and Community Development within Wicklow. The department is responsible for the National Social Enterprise Policy published last year, the three main objectives of which are creating awareness of social enterprise, supporting the growth of social enterprise and policy alignment.
Devin Reardon
Devin Reardon is the founder of Find Your Tribe, an early-stage social enterprise planning to enable ‘positive action through experience’ — bringing people together through activities rather than networking. He believes experience-based socialising is the most natural way to bring people together and create community. From his own experience, Devin understands that engaging in passions and interests, especially in a community atmosphere, can seriously help to remedy mental health difficulties. He finds this to be a particularly meaningful social aim in a time when Ireland is experiencing a mental health crisis.
Paul McDermott
Paul McDermott is the founder and CEO of Clutch Academy Ireland, a sports and recreational coaching company working with school-aged children, Tusla youth groups and men with Down syndrome. The social enterprise teaches inclusivity and resilience through sport, providing fun training sessions & targeted physical activity programmes across the county for all ages, levels of ability and sporting types, focusing on the character-building side of sport & games.
Avril Bailey
Avril Bailey is the County Wicklow PPN representative on the County Wicklow Partnership Board and a member of the Lackan Community Development Association. Avril is also the founder of Community in Mind. This social enterprise aims to support organisations in the NGO sector to support and maintain the psychological health of staff and employees affordably and sustainably. She is an experienced Senior Community Manager with a demonstrated history of working in education, training and advocacy in the community and voluntary sector for over 20 years. She maintains an interest in volunteering and community development.
Laura Holly
Laura Holly is the founder of Sugarloaf Botanics. This social enterprise aims to reconnect people with the value of local plants and our native habitat through formulating natural skincare from plants organically grown or wildcrafted in Wicklow. With a background in medicine, Laura understands the value of carefully considered and consciously created ingredients. She believes that the more people start to grow herbs and plants, the better it will be for the body and the planet. The emphasis is on what’s in season. The longer-term vision is to improve the area's biodiversity by rewilding large tracts of land and hosting workshops and foraging walks to reconnect people with Wicklow’s wealth of therapeutic plants.
Evelyn Murray
Evelyn Murray is the Rural Development Officer at County Wicklow Partnership. She primarily works on the LEADER programme, specialising in the social enterprise development measure. The 2014-2020 run of the programme has just topped the million mark for the amount invested into social enterprise.
Ahmed Mu’Azzam and Hugh Weldon
Ahmed Mu’Azzam and Hugh Weldon are co-founders of Evocco, an app which empowers consumers to make more sustainable food choices by tracking the climate impact of their food purchases. By snapping photographs of food shopping receipts and learning the carbon footprint and nutrition scores of different food items (provided by Eaternity, a leading life cycle assessment data company based in Switzerland), consumers can find the most nutritious food for the lowest climate impact.
Laura McDermott
Laura McDermott is the Director of Academic Experience and Innovation at the IE Business School in Madrid. She designs sustainable innovation projects with educational institutions, startups and corporates, specifically from a behavioural lens. In 2018 she designed the global Red Innova community, which facilitates the scaling of social startups.
Peir Leonard
Peir Leonard is the local County Councillor in Arklow municipal district. He works with the suicide prevention charity Talk To Tom, a community-based social enterprise providing mental health awareness and bereavement support. Their services include one-to-one, group, and family counselling and therapy sessions. Child and adolescent services, bereavement support and community outreach programmes.
David and Anna O’Keeffe
David and Anna O’Keeffe are co-founders of the early-stage social enterprise Ushanka Kvass. They hope to bring the traditional Baltic drink made from fermenting rye bread, kvass, to Ireland. They aim to create a cross-cultural appreciation for the drink and to support local artists and sellers by stocking their kvass in local shops and displaying work by local Irish artists and writers on the packaging.
Lorraine Bowen
Lorraine Bowen is the Head of Innovation and Impact at The Entrepreneurs Academy in Ireland. Beginning her career as a textile design and manufacturing entrepreneur, she has over ten years of experience. With this expertise, she now develops partnerships with government agencies and corporate clients and designs Entrepreneur Development programmes to ensure Irish SMEs start strong and achieve their business ambitions.
John Kearns
John Kearns is Chief Executive of Partas, managing four Enterprise Centres, a training division and a micro-loan fund. He has led research on a national and EU level into many areas of social policy, particularly innovation, entrepreneurship and social enterprise. He has also worked with partners throughout Central and Eastern Europe in developing their social enterprise policies and practices. He has held advisory roles at local, national and international levels and is currently driving a new collaboration initiative in Tallaght called the ‘Social + Local Enterprise Alliance’. He has a successful track record as an entrepreneur in his own right in a variety of sectors, most notably the music business. He holds an MBA with a specialisation in Entrepreneurship and serves as an expert advisor to the European Commission on social enterprise.
Rachel Tyrell
Rachel Tyrell is the founder of the social enterprise The Colour Club, a newly opened creativity and wellness centre for kids and their grown-ups, providing experience-based activities for families within Wicklow. People can learn, explore, and experience art, crafts, design, music and movement in a space that is intentionally unique, visually stimulating and immersive. Rachel has used her design education to help her think differently and think outside the box.
Rose Doss
Rose Doss is the founder of the Cracked Cup Coffee Truck, a social enterprise borne out of her passion for empowering young people as a mental health occupational therapist, alongside a decade-long career in the hospitality industry. She has partnered with local mental health agencies to provide structured employment opportunities for vulnerable young people. The premise of Rose’s social enterprise is that while you’re tending to your well-being with your neighbourly coffee break from your home office, you’re directly investing in young people's futures.
Laura Dennehy
Laura Dennehy is the Country Manager for Enactus Ireland. This international non-profit organisation brings together student, academic and business leaders committed to using the power of entrepreneurial action to improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need.
Kate Hennessy
Kate Hennessy is the creator and owner of Purple Bombshell Drama, an early-stage social enterprise looking to educate people on disability awareness and the LGBTQIA+ community through specialised drama workshops. The notion is that when people are out of their seats interacting with each other, they’ll feel more comfortable asking the difficult questions they might not in other scenarios.