CEO Kate Dobbyn is Managing Director of RKD Consulting Ltd and her career spans the areas of Hotel Management, Event Mangement, Marketing and Public Relations.

She spent over 20 years running her own frenetic Event Management and PR business, Corporate Events,  before ‘slowing it all down’ and starting out on her own ‘spiritual journey’ in 2000.

She has studied and traveled extensively and is a well known practitioner, teacher and strong supporter of Holistic and Complementary Therapies for maximizing health and wellbeing.

Kate has been involved in a number of charities over the past 25 years.  She has visited Nairobi, Kenya on two occasions and has witnessed on the one hand the extreme poverty of the slums of Mathare and Kibera and on the other the daily miracles that are achieved by Microcredit and Jamii Bora one of Seachange’s partners in the field.

Ian Kingston is founder and managing director of Essential Training.

He has over 20 years experience in the area of personal and business development.

Having held senior executive positions in Banking and Insurance, Essential Training was set up in 1996. Today the company is recognised as one of Ireland’s foremost training companies with many blue chip organisations on its client list.

Ian brings a unique brand of energy, know-how and passion to his training. Working with high performing teams and individuals his challenging style both questions and compels his audience to make lasting change.

A master NLP™ practitioner he is currently working with senior executive teams in Ireland, the UK and Europe.

His experience ranges from dealing with high performance teams drilling for oil in Russia, to the leisure industry working with some of the most successful pubs in Ireland, to the Irish Rugby squad. This energy and enthusiasm are infectious and he guarantees to entertain as well as educate.

Ian has been involved with charities for many years and as well as his formative involvement with Sea Change he is also involved with a long established charity helping eliminate homelessness in Dublin.

Dave Gribben is Managing Director of Enable, a business performance consultancy.  Dave works with organisations in Ireland and across Europe enabling these companies to create ‘high performance’ cultures at all levels.

Dave has a vast array of experience within the Financial Services business, holding senior management positions for the last twenty five years as Managing Director of ITC Group, Head of Wealth Management at Ulster Bank Group and Sales Director at Abbey Life.  During his time with Ulster Bank, Dave completed a Master of Science Degree in Management Practice from Trinity College Dublin.

Dave has been involved as a Director of many charities for the past twenty years helping eliminate homelessness in Dublin.  Through recent visits to Bangladesh and Kenya he has been able to see the impact of microcredit on extreme poverty and is now a founding Director of Seachange.

Patrick Ronaldson is a founding partner and Director of Strategic Planning at Rothco Ltd, one of Ireland’s foremost advertising agencies.

Patrick has a degree in Economics from UCD followed by a 20 year apprenticeship in Advertising! During this time he has worked with leading Irish and International agencies, Irish International Advertising and Saatchi & Saatchi before co-founding Rothco in 1995.

He has been responsible for the strategic marketing of some of Ireland’s biggest brands, including, most recently, Aer Lingus, Hibernian Insurance and AIB.

During a recent career break Patrick saw at first hand the effects of extreme poverty in South Africa, Nepal and India, prompting him on his return to assist in the founding of ‘Sea Change’.

Mick O’Connell had a life changing accident on 9th of November 2002 when he was playing a rugby match for his club Dolphin.He was 26 years old and working as a carpenter at the time.

He was paralysed from the chest down and for a number of months his life was in danger, spending that time in the intensive care unit at the Cork University Hospital.

A sucessful appeal was set up to help him begin his rehabilitation and adapt the family home for his needs.
Over the last 5 years he has showed incredible courage and strength to make remarkable progress through his determination,bravery and perserverence.

During this time he has always been overwhelmed by the kindness of all those who helped him and to acknowledge this has supported a number of charitable causes and the inspriration for the Sea Change Foundation to be set up.

Barry Moylan has spent over 20 years in the ICT industry having held Senior Management and executive Director roles with both domestic and multinational product and service providers.

He recently established his own business ’Salesreach’where he assists organisations to accelerate sales performance success in domestic and overseas markets.

He is passionate about the simplicity and proven difference that Microcredit has achieved through empowering the poorest of the poor to lift themselves out of extreme poverty.

Following a recent visit to one of our Microcredit partners in Kenya he saw at first hand the amazing entrepreneurial spirit that exists in the most challenging conditions you are ever likely to witness