Our Board of Directors carry the full governance responsibility for the organisation.
By law, they have individual and joint responsibility for what happens within our Foundation. This means that if our Foundation does not meet its legal duties, the Board are responsible both as individuals and together as a board, committee, council or other core group (referred to in this Code as the ‘board’).
No Director receives any payment for their contribution or support for our Foundation.
John is a former CEO of Beaumont Hospital (2001-2004) and of the Irish Medical Council (2004-2009).
He now works as self-employed management consultant, and as a part-time lecturer/supervisor at Dublin Business School and Independent Colleges, specialising in project management, leadership, business and HR strategy, ethics, governance, organisational culture and research methods. He was previously a tutor/examiner at the Open University and the Irish Management Institute.
John’s professional background is medical laboratory science, and he left the laboratory environment in 1996 on appointment to a senior management post within the Irish health services. He held four senior management appointments in the Irish health system and has over thirty years experience at Board level.
John possesses a Masters degree in science, and a Masters degree in Business Administration. He is a member of the Project Management Institute.
Mr Grainger is a medical graduate of Trinity College Dublin. In 1988 Mr Grainger was appointed Consultant Urologist to The Meath Hospital, St James Hospital and The National Medical Rehabilitation Hospital Dun Laoghaire. Following the move of The Meath Hospital to Tallaght in 1998, he continued as a Consultant Urologist in Tallaght until his retirement from public practice in 2012.
He is an active member of The Irish Kidney Association and Transplant Team Ireland.
In October 2016 he was chosen as an Ambassador for the Fit For Life Programme, organised by The World Transplant Games Federation and is a strong supporter of organ donation.
Cathy Kelly joined Pieta House in 2008. Cathy previously worked in the construction industry for 18 years where she was a co-director of a building contracting company. Her position was Company Secretary.
Cathy met Joan Freeman, founder of Pieta House, in 2006 and was impressed by her social entrepreneurship and her vision to support those who found themselves at a raised risk of suicide and self-harm.
Cathy joined Pieta House when there was just one centre in West Dublin. She worked with Joan to expand the Pieta House services nationwide from one centre to nine centres in a six year period and to establish and grow the now iconic Darkness into Light event. In 2016 alone, almost 6,000 people came through the Pieta House doors suffering from suicidal ideation or engaging in self-harm, or to avail of suicide bereavement counselling.
Cathy is now part of the executive team at Pieta House with responsibility and development and works closely CEO Brian J Higgins to fulfil the mission of the organization.
Joe Hayes retired from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in June 2014. He served as Ireland’s ambassador to China, to Denmark and Iceland, to the Czech Republic and Ukraine and latterly as ambassador to Singapore with dual accreditation to Indonesia, The Philippines, Brunei and Timor Leste.
He worked in Armagh as Joint Secretary of the North South Ministerial Council. He was Ireland’s representative on the Board of the Asia Europe Foundation and architect of Ireland’s first Asis Strategy. He also served in Irish Embassies in Bonn, Moscow and London, as Deputy Legal Advisor, as Press Officer and as Press Secretary to the Minister.
Prior to joining DFAT Joe worked as a lawyer with the IDA and as a journalist with Independent Newspapers.
Ciaran Faughnan is the current Director of Estates and Facilities in Tallaght University Hospital, prior to this Ciaran was engaged by the CEO’s office in St James ‘s Hospital to cultivate a strategy for their campus development.
Ciaran’s career is now fully embedded in Healthcare having worked both here in Ireland and in the US over the last 20 years in senior management roles within the construction and engineering industries.
Ciaran was the former CEO of the Wellness Initiative Alliance, a not-for-profit organization that for three years supported the “Schools Fitness Challenge” in collaboration with DCU and Aviva Health. Ciaran has highlighted this voluntary role as one of the most rewarding periods of his life.
Sharee Basdeo graduated from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, with a B.A. in Natural Sciences with a Moderatorship in Molecular Medicine. She completed her PhD in 2014 in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology. Sharee’s research interest include understanding T Cell and Microphage function and plasticity in health and disease settings and the importance of the innate-adaptive synapse in governing immune outcomes. Her work to date has been highly translational and she has published papers in the field of autoimmunity (rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis), transplant and more recently has turned her attention to infectious diseases. Sharee’s current research endeavours are focused on the generation of host-directed therapies for antibiotic resistant infections, for which she has recently been awarded her own research funding. Sharee presents her work at international conferences and has been an invited speaker on several occasions. In addition, she is dedicated to science communication with the lay public and is involved in a number of outreach activities.
Sharee contributes to the running of her host institute; She serves on two committees for the Trinity Translational Medicine Institute at St James’s Hospital and is also currently the Post-Doctoral Research Fellow representative on the Faculty of Health Science Executive Committee.
Outside the lab, Sharee has been involved in volunteer work with the Church of Ireland for the past 15 years. She is serving on Diocesan Councils for a second triennium.
Professor Seamas Donnelly is a graduate of University College Galway (UCG) and completed his respiratory and general medicine training at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh. As Lecturer in Respiratory Medicine at the University of Edinburgh he successfully competed for a Welcome Trust Advanced Fellowship which enabled him to work at the Picower Institute in New York, an internationally renowned research centre affiliated with Rockefeller University.
Professor Donnelly returned to UCD and St Vincent’s University Hospital in 2001. As Head of Medicine at St Vincent’s University Hospital he was responsible for the rolling out of the new modular medical curriculum on campus. He is recognised as an international leader in translational medicine and his research epitomizes classical bench to bedside on an international stage. The work of his research group is leading to novel therapies in respiratory disease, particularly asthma, COPD and sarcoidosis.
He was one of the first clinicians to be awarded a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Principal Investigator Programme grant award which was recently renewed for a further five years. This work has focused on the development of novel small molecular-weight anti-inflammatory agents targeting chronic inflammatory diseases particularly pertaining to the lung. He is a co-applicant on the recently awarded Wellcome Trust/HRB Dublin Clinical Research Facility.
In 2010 he was awarded an Honorary Professorship by the University of Edinburgh. The University of Edinburgh is currently ranked among the top 20 universities in the world and following the recent UK Research Assessment Exercise, has been ranked number one with regards to medical research. The citation from Edinburgh University recognised Professor Donnelly as an international leader in medical research.
In 2013 he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Quarterly Journal of Medicine (QJM), an international medical journal published by Oxford University Press (OUP).
Peter is the CEO of South Dublin Chamber of Commerce which is the business Representative Body representing the business community of South Dublin County. Peter has extensive experience of running a number of different organisations.
Specialities; Organisational Behaviour, staff management and motivation, Leadership, Development of organisations.
Peter was awarded the Howard Rosen Award for Excellence in 2012. The new Howard Rosen Award for excellence has been introduced in recognition of Howard Rosen’s presidency of COBCOE. The award is sponsored by Jeeves Group and awarded to a special personality from among the chamber network in recognition for special contribution to the development of the chambers movement.