A startup evangelist she is a graduate of Business Computing, a certified Software Engineer and Project Manager, she is just in the last weeks of her Executive MBA in UCC. She has been a board member of Startup Ireland (now part of Connect Ireland) and was on the National Steering Group for the Startup Gathering which saw more than 18k people come together to support, connect and discuss the startup ecosystem in Ireland. Gillian spoke at CeBIT earlier this year as a guest of the Lisbon Council and with the European Startup Network on the Irish Startup Ecosystem and is working with Startup Ireland on the Global Startup Nations Summit and Global Startup Gathering taking place in Cork this November. LIT, with campuses across Limerick, Clare and Tipperary, has the largest portfolio of enterprise, incubation and acceleration centres in Ireland. Gillian is responsible for 5 enterprise, incubation & acceleration centres in Limerick and Tipperary, 2 early stage seed funds (Enterprise Ladder Fund (ELF) and The Dr. Tony Ryan Entrepreneurship Fund for Tipperary). In addition to a number of startup support programmes and masterclasses she also manages the Enterprise Ireland funded National Entrepreneur Development Programme called New Frontiers for early stage innovative HPSU’s which is run at the Hartnett Acceleration Centre on campus at LIT which also involves a collaboration with UL Nexus. The LIT Enterprise Office supported 99 entrepreneurs through startup support programmes in 2015/16. Companies that have been supported through the LIT Enterprise Office create €1.1bn in annual economic value. Gillian sits on a number of boards including the Limerick Civic Trust and The Learning Hub. She is the Co-Founder and Director of the ITLG Young Innovators event which saw almost 700 young students attend the competition earlier this year for the second time in Shannon Airport. These students, along with more than 120 mentors from industry and academia, came together to develop insights, identify opportunities and develop innovative solutions on how we will live in the future using a human centric, design thinking focussed approach. Gillian held a number of roles in technology consultancy companies and before joining LIT she spent several years based in London heading up a CRM professional services department for an international fast growing technology and business consultancy firm.