Board Members in the IEF
Peter Osborne has been involved in good relations and reconciliation most of his life working in the private sector and with many public agencies and Councils in Ireland, North and South.
He was Chair of the Community Relations Council and prior to that, for ten years, was a Commissioner or Chair of the Parades Commission.
Peter founded and chaired Landmark East (now Eastside Property), a property-based social enterprise with assets of approximately £10 million.
Peter is a board member of the International Fund for Ireland and the Policing Board.
Peter has been involved in many voluntary activities over the years. Volunteering at present includes as chair of the Integrated Education Fund, chair of Remembering Srebrenica, and chair of the Centre for Cross Border Studies as well as a board member with National Museums Northern Ireland.
Ken Cathcart spent most of his working life as an Administrator and Customer Services Manager in the electricity industry. After taking early retirement from Northern Ireland Electricity, he worked on a number of contentious community disputes and family issues as an independent consultant and mediator.
Ken has a B.A.(Hons) in Business Studies from Ulster University and a Masters’ in Business Administration from The Open University, with a Distinction in Strategic Management.
He was a founder parent of Braidside Integrated Primary School in Ballymena and the first Chair of its Board of Governors. On moving to Derry, he served on the Board of Governors of Oakgrove Integrated College and was Chair for a five year period. He also chaired the Board of Directors of IEF during a previous term of office. He is currently a Governor of North Coast Integrated College and a member of the Interim Board of Governors of the proposed new Controlled Integrated College in the Causeway area.
In his spare time, Ken enjoys walking and music and is a keen bridge player.
Sorcha is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast and has worked at Allstate Northern Ireland for over 20 years, joining as a graduate developer and holding senior leadership roles in operations and security before heading up the Risk & Compliance, Administrative and Legal Services teams, with responsibility for data privacy, risk management and regulatory compliance.
Sorcha is involved in a number of diversity and inclusion initiatives at Allstate NI including being a member of the Diversity and Inclusion steering group and the Women in Technology at Allstate network. She has spoken on the topic of inclusive diversity as a guest lecturer at Ulster University as well as at Digital DNA Belfast.
Sorcha previously chaired the Board of Governors of Lough View Integrated Primary and Nursery School and is an independent assessor for Diversity Mark NI.
As an official in the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Barbara McAtamney has held a range of legislative, policy, operational, and programme/project management roles, including Departmental Assembly Liaison Officer whilst in the Justice Minister’s Office. During this time she has worked closely with Ministers, special advisors, political representatives, policy advisors from a variety of Departments, councils, a range of arms-length bodies and voluntary and community groups.
During her career, Barbara achieved an Honours Degree in Management and Business Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. She also completed the Leaders for Tomorrow Programme at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Barbara is currently Vice Chair of the Board of Governors at Corran Integrated Primary School and Nursery, Larne. As a Governor she serves on the Finance, Staffing and General Purposes Sub-Committee.
In her spare time she enjoys reading and travelling.
Michael is an economist by training and has 25 years’ experience working in Government, North and South, in the Irish energy sector and in strategic communications. He has a BSSc (Economics) and MSSc from Queen’s University, Belfast and a range of other qualifications including a postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Statistical Methods from Trinity College, Dublin.
He is founder of BMF Business Services, an independent Northern Ireland communications consultancy/ publishing house. BMF offers event management and communications consultancy services and publishes a number of regular titles including the ‘AgendaNI’ public policy magazine.
In his earlier career Michael was a professionally qualified Housing Manager in the NI Housing Executive. He subsequently joined the Department of Finance in Dublin where, after a spell in Public Expenditure Division, he became an Irish Government trade negotiator in Brussels and Geneva and a Director of the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI). He later returned to Northern Ireland to become Interconnector Business Manager for Northern Ireland Electricity.
In more recent times Michael stepped outside BMF when invited to serve as Special Adviser (SpAd) to Northern Ireland’s Social Development Ministers (Margaret Ritchie/Alex Attwood) and later Environment Ministers (Alex Attwood/Mark H Durkan).
Michael is also currently a non-Executive Director of Mutual Energy Ltd and of Belfast Metropolitan College.
Outside of work Michael pursues a strong interest in early Irish heritage. He has 3 children and lives in Lurgan, Co Armagh.
Brandon McMaster retired as a Director from the Northern Ireland Audit Office in 2017. He has over 40 years’ experience in the public sector, 38 of which have been as an external auditor to government departments and public bodies, challenging and supporting management through financial and value for money audits, and attendance at Audit and Risk Committees. His time in NIAO included a 2-year secondment to the Department of Finance.
Brandon is a qualified Company Secretary. He also holds a postgraduate diploma in Organisational Design and Development from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and is a graduate of the Federal Executive Institute, Charlottesville, Virginia.
Brandon is currently a Non-Executive Director of the Board of the Forest Service and is Chair of its Audit and Risk Committee.
Ellen McVea retired as vice principal of Shimna Integrated College, having taught English there since the school’s foundation in 1994. She previously taught in Methodist College in Belfast and Enniskillen Collegiate School. She was a member of the founding group of Erne Integrated College and was a member of All Children Together from the mid-seventies. She also served as chief moderator and reviser with CCEA and on the ministerial group for the curriculum in English.
Ellen attended Friends School, Lisburn, the University of Durham, Liverpool University, Queen’s University Belfast, and the University of Ulster and has held schoolteacher fellowships at both Oxford and Cambridge universities. She was previously an active member of Women in Education and the Women’s Development Network. She comes from Whitehead and now lives in Newcastle, County Down.
Ellen is currently a NICIE representative on the Boards of Governors of Shimna IC and Erne IC and an EA representative on the Board of Governors of All Children’s IPS. She is also a past director of NICIE and of Voiding the Void.
Patricia Murtagh is the retired principal of Hazelwood Integrated Primary School.
Hazelwood Integrated Primary was established by parents along with its sister school Hazelwood Integrated College in 1985 in an interface area in North Belfast. Patricia was part of the original team facing many challenges and developing what Integrated Education looks like in real terms. She has a strong belief in the impact of educating children together and the positive permutations of this for whole communities.
Since retiring, Patricia has maintained strong connections with the ongoing work of developing and supporting Integrated Education through NICIE and IEF. The message of integration has been shared with future educationalists in talks at Stranmillis College and she is actively involved in developing the role of Religious Education in Integrated schools through an Interfaith group at IEF. She has played an active role as an IEF director, sitting on many steering groups, and maintains a strong commitment to learn more and offer insight where relevant.
Patricia is a keen member of her church choir and enjoys yoga and walking. Regular visits to her house in Donegal are an important way to recharge.
Mary Roulston, the founding principal of Millennium Integrated Primary School, was also the school’s teaching principal for its first five and a half years. The school was pioneered by parents and opened in September 2000 with 10 Primary 1 children. Mary led the school for 17 years until her retirement in September 2017, by which time the school had grown to an enrolment of 322 children with an additional 53 children in the nursery.
Mary was born and educated in England. Her husband is from Northern Ireland and when they got married in 1977, the intention was to live in Yorkshire. However a working summer holiday in Northern Ireland, encouragement from his family to stay here, and finding a beautiful, old farmhouse on the Ards Peninsula enticed her to stay!
She has worked in a variety of schools in England, in France, both pre and post qualification, and in Northern Ireland. She has also visited schools in America, Spain, Norway, Israel and the West Bank, to observe practice in the classrooms and to discuss educational philosophy. In addition to this she has also worked in the Rudolf Steiner School in Holywood and is now a Trustee of the school. A career break of 8 years, during the time when her 3 sons were born, and were of pre-school age, took her into a prolonged period of cross-community work in her local village. During this period she was Chairperson of the Parent and Toddler Group and also the Community Association, of which she was a founder member and which delivered a much needed community hall and health facilities. She continues to be Chair of the Board of Governors of Kircubbin Community Nursery.
Throughout her varied career and experiences she has worked with the socially and academically elite as well as with the most marginalised members of society in three different countries. Inclusion of children with complex special needs has always been important to her.
She was delighted to be awarded the Belfast Telegraph Woman of the Year in Education Award in 2014. Mary considers that being the founding principal of Millennium and working in the integrated sector has been the biggest and most rewarding challenge of her career.
June Wilkinson has one daughter and lives with her husband outside Crossgar. She has a degree in social policy and business management and commenced her career in the NI Civil Service in November 1977. She has had a varied career working on a range of policy and development areas including capital investment projects in the Department of Health and OFMDFM. June concluded her career in the Department of Education securing Executive approval and publication of the Children and Young People’s Strategy for NI. The strategy is the framework through which government must deliver improved outcomes for all children and young people in NI.
A committed supporter of Integrated Education, June was part of the Parents Group who, with the support of the IEF in 2006, opened the independent post-primary Rowallane Integrated College. Two years later the school secured Department of Education development approval to join with Down Academy in Downpatrick to open the new Blackwater Integrated College.
June is a Trustee on the Board of the charitable Ballynahinch Counselling Service, which is free to the community, working across the mid-Co Down area in partnership with the Public Health Agency and the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust.
Patricia Woods recently retired having enjoyed a career of just over 30 years working in the Pharmaceutical Industry in a variety of roles including Training, Market Access, Account Management and Brand Support. She very much enjoyed working alongside a wide array of internal colleagues as well as communicating with many wonderful healthcare professionals on all levels and across all major therapeutic areas. Outside of her role, she enjoyed opportunities to contribute to the wider workplace, more recently through initiatives such as the ‘Take Pride’ group, which sought to drive inclusion and diversity around LGBTQ+ issues in the workplace.
Patricia has long had an interest in Integrated Education and, with her husband, chose that route for both her children. She was Chair of the Parents’ Council at Lagan College before becoming a Parent Governor. She is currently a Director Nominated Governor, chairing the Education and HR Committee at Lagan College, a role which she finds very rewarding.
Outside of work, Patricia has volunteered as an Alumni Mentor for Queen’s University Belfast, mentoring students around successful interview and CV preparation and offering support to expand their network as they leave study and prepare to embark upon their professional life.
In terms of study, Patricia completed a BA Hons in French at Queen’s University Belfast and a Masters in Marketing at Ulster University. She is also a member of The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.
Hilary Copeland joined Fighting Words Northern Ireland as the inaugural Director in March 2021. She has worked across business management, strategic planning, creative programming and event delivery for festivals, arts and theatre nonprofits in Edinburgh, Belfast and Dublin since 2008.
Hilary is a founding member and former Chair of Integrated AlumNI, a group of past pupils and supporters of Integrated schools who advocate for Integrated Education, a movement which champions all-ability education for those of all faiths and none, addressing segregation in the education system in Northern Ireland.
Hilary sits on the Board of Governors of New-Bridge Integrated College.