Portraits of Clongowes

There is a wonderful photo in the Castle of the physicists working at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory in August 1920.  Taking his position amongst historical greats such as Prof. Chadwick and Ernest Rutherford is Fr C. Power S.J.   The script underneath describes the former as being famous for his discovery of the neutron while Rutherford discovered the alpha particle and was famous fo...

Adam Lewis a native and is currently principal of Boston College High School. After time as principal of Loyola School in Manhattan, NY. And b4 a director of Senior Campus at Xavier College in Melbourne, Australia, a Jesuit school serving 1000 boys He was also Deputy Principal of Saint Ignatius College Riverview in Sydney, Australia, was d a Jesuit school for 1500 boys. His connection to. With CWC...

Peter O’Meara left Clongowes in 1988. A native of Mallow where he lives with his wife Hilary and four children, Peter was President of The Clongowes Union for the year 2023/2024. He is a Director of Savills Ireland, based in their Cork office, with whom he has worked for over 30 years.

Our guest is one of the early Alberto Hurtado Bursary graduates, who entered the Jesuit noviciate in Innsbruck this September.  Shadowing the life of Fr Cyril Power S.J. (OC 1907) Seán studied Theoretical Physics in Cambridge after leaving Clongowes.  While at Cambridge he gained his full blue in Rugby, playing in two Varsity matches, one time on losing and the following year on the winning side H...

Adam MacNulty is President and Client Portfolio Manager, Brandes Investment Partners (Europe) based in Dublin Previously he was with with Pioneer investments , Davys and Aviva Investors A graduate of the Michael Smurfit Business School with an MBS in Financial Services following his BA Ecomomics from UCD He left Clongowes in 1988

Blair is CFO of Vanguard Europe, which manages over $400bn in assets across the UK, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland and France; as well as having a growing presence in Ireland. Blair has held a variety of senior finance and business strategy roles. He has worked across different geographies, business sectors and in businesses at varied stages of maturity. The common thread is that he has...

Born in Galway in 1961, David Soden grew up in “Tullamore, Ring and Clongowes” and went on to obtain a BCL at University College, Dublin. Having trained as a solicitor in Waterford, he returned to Dublin in 1989 and has been self-employed since the mid-1990s. He’s one of a numbers of brothers who attended Clongowes and one. Of sets of brothers to appear on Portraits. Married with no children, Davi...

John Daly was born in Dublin on the day JFK was shot, as good an alibi as you'll get. Attended Clongowes Wood College (OC 1982 [his brother Conor OC 1985]), Dublin City University, University of Oxford (Keble College) and the Institute of Art & Law. John has worked as a lecturer in a number of third level institutions including the National College of Art & Design and at the Open University; he al...

Tanner O’Connell grew up in County Meath before attending Clongowes. He studied Commerce in UCD and completed a Masters in Accounting in Smurfit Business School. After his studies he qualified as a Chartered Accountant in KPMG's Deal Advisory Department Tanner joined Elkstone (a leading Irish Investment House) in 2018 and, working with Alan Merriman, has held Investment Director, Chief of Staff an...

Ross Finegan started out his career in 1994 at Deloitte Corporate Finance where he advised management teams on MBO’s In 1996 he moved to JP Morgan Partners, the private equity arm of JP Morgan. In the mid naughtiest he cofounder of Lonsdale Capital Partners and is based l in London He trained as a chartered accountant in PWC after completing a BComm in UCD Ross Finegan left CWC in 1987

George T Smith heard the call to become a Basilian as a young man headed into law school. After meeting a group of Basilians at the University of St. Michael’s College, Smith discovered their unique blend of priesthood, brotherhood and dedication to teaching. In 2010 he became the elected leader of the congregation of St. Basil at 43 years of age. A role he completed and these days he is William a...

Judge Fergal M. Gaynor serves as the Reserve International Co-Prosecutor at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and represents victims at the International Criminal Court He also served as a Senior Assistant Prosecutor at the ECCC from 2015 to 2016 and as counsel for the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal fo...

Simon Byrne is a Sales Manager with 25 years experience in the Irish Beauty industry, specialising in cosmetics and fragrance. He is a previous winner of the Francois Coty award for outstanding contribution to the Coty Ireland business as well as being a Certified Fragrance Sales Specialist accredited by the UK Fragrance Foundation (FiFi). The third of 4 brothers from Waterford to attend Clongowes...

On the completion of the podcast series, Portraits of Clongowes, Dec Ryan reviews the episodes with Rossa McDermott, informally bringing closure on the 100 episodes in Series I, II, III & IV recorded over the past eighteen months. The latest podcast series were made possible by the kind support of Jigsaw Youth Mental Health, Hannon Travel. Liz O’Kane Buying Agent, and GoFundMe. The generosity of s...

Peter studied Business & Law in UCD, trained with KPMG Corporate Finance in Dublin and worked in Private Equity Investment in London with Downing Development Capital. He returned to Ireland to join his family’s business, Greenscene, and managed the sale of the business to, private equity backed, MCR Group in 2023. He now advises other Irish SMEs and their founders seeking an exit or funding, throu...

Dave Moloney works as an engineering leader in Google in California, making the camera systems that power Google Maps and Google Earth. Trained in law and software engineering, Dave's career has taken him to Ireland, UK and US: organic farmer, software & internationalization engineer, and global operations in Handspring & Palm, as the smartphone came into being. Within Google, he has led internal...

Since graduating from University College Cork, Aonghus Kelly has worked around the world in the field of human rights and war crimes Originally from Galway he initially went to UCG to study law and he has made it his life’s work to investigate war criminals – having worked in the Balkans, Cambodia and the Middle East.  After UCC, he has studied in Wellington, UCC, Sarajevo, Indiana and Cambridge H...

Dan Sheehan signed his first professional contract with Leinster in June 2020, and made his debut for Leinster in October 2020 in the Pro14 against Zebre, scoring two tries in the match. Sheehan was honoured as Leinster's Men's Young Player of the Year for the 2021-22 season, and was also named in the URC Elite XV of the year for the 2022-23 season. On the international stage, Sheehan made his sen...

Well known to generations of Clongownians and parents, Margaret Doyle arrived in the school in 1972 from a teaching role in Maryland, in the USA. Margaret started teaching History and Geography in Clongowes on my arrival that same year, and me fresh from years preparing for my English history O’Levels in Madrid. In 2014 motivated by her keen interest in military history and had been documenting th...

Richard Flood portrayed the role of Samuel Johanson in an episode of the series Titanic: Blood and Steel in 2012. He joined the main cast of the television series Crossing Lines in 2013, playing detective Tommy McConnel, a specialist in weapons and tactics from Northern Ireland, until 2014. That next year, in 2015, Flood joined the main cast of the series Red Rock, where he played the police super...

Joey Kennedy was the youngest candidate to be selected by Fianna Fáil in the local elections in 2024 in the Portarlington Graiguecullen Municipal District at aged just 19 His Academy paper in Poetry was titled “Centenary of Irish Independence – 100 years on” Now a director at Willow and Green interiors and furniture he is a former school captain and one of a number of school captains featured on t...

Barry O’Callaghan is the Chairman and CEO of AKLO Capital (a private investment office) His story is growing a small educational software company, Riverdeep, into the largest K-12 publishing company in the US educational system. After getting a law degree from Trinity College he joined an investment bank - first in the London office, then 2 Hong Kong , before moving to New York City to work at Sal...

Conor Gilsenan was into Gaelic football as a youngster, but ultimately chose rugby as a teenager when he had to make a choice He cited his biggest influence in his profession as coming from his family and 'role-model', Irish rugby player; Brian O'Driscoll. He a former Ireland U18, U19 and U20 flanker himself, and was part of the Leinster’s Academy, played for Connacht and London Irish. Freakishly...

Adrian Gahan (School Secretary, 1997) is a conservation campaigner based in London. After working for John Bruton OC'65 #RIP n the EU Delegation to the USA, he then worked in the UK parliament on environment and climate change legislation. Currently Gahan chairs a coalition of UK NGOs and has spent the last ten years working with them to create the world’s largest marine conservation programme, pr...

Piaras Power (OC '90) is Partner in international law firm Eversheds Sutherland where he holds the role of Head of Banking & Finance and Co-Head of the FS Sector Group (Ireland). Piaras' practice focuses on acquisition finance, real estate & development finance as well as project and infrastructure funding. His clients include both Irish and international financial institutions and...