TEDxTallaght.com

Fiona Brennan
Fiona Brennan is a Clinical Hypnotherapist and founder of Ireland's premier, five-star online program The Positive Habit designed to help people overcome negativity and anxiety. She is a Certified NLP practitioner and mental health blogger based in Dublin. She helps people every day to overcome anxiety, stress, and comfort eating to take control of their minds and to reach their full positive potential. She holds a Higher Diploma in Clinical Hypnosis and is a certified NLP practitioner. Her most recent training was in Positive Neuroplasticity with the Neuropsychologist, Rick Hanson.

Fiona frequently appears in the national media on issues of anxiety, emotional eating, and mental health and is fast becoming known as an ambassador of positivity. She writes regularly for the acclaimed mental health website run by Bressie, A Lust for Life. 
Website: The Positive Habit
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FionaBrennanThePositiveHabit/
Twitter:  @fionabrennan19

John Beckett 

John is CEO and Co-Founder, ChannelSight. He is a technology entrepreneur and investor who made waves as a teenager, when he won the contract to build Ryanair’s ecommerce website. He went on to develop ground-breaking biometrics technology, showcased globally on the Discovery Channel and has since founded and built technology businesses in Europe, the US and Asia. He was named All-Ireland Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2006 before being diagnosed as needing a kidney transplant. John was lucky enough to receive a life-saving kidney from his dad in 2010 and after a speedy recovery discovered new found energy, confidence and passion for entrepreneurship. John is currently focused on running ChannelSight, which helps brands to increase sales and optimise advertising performance, and has raised €5m from institutional investors since 2015. 

John credits success in the face of adversity to his resilience, which developed from the tough lessons that his entrepreneurial career path taught him. John believes that fostering resilience is one of the most important skills people can acquire to help them become and remain successful at whatever it is they are passionate about. John seeks to inspire and encourage others as a mentor and through his blog and social media
Twitter: @johnbeckett
Website: johnbeckett.com
LinkedIn: John Beckett

Mark Kelly 
Mark Kelly’s podcast What I Know Now introduces listeners to inspirational stories of leadership and personal development. Set up in 2016, guests discuss the good and bad of their journey to now and challenges interviewees to outline what they would tell their 18-year-old self if they could have a coffee with them today. Featuring polar explorers, elite runners, New York Times bestselling authors and motivational speakers it aims to put leadership coaching in easy reach of everyone.

Building on his background in recruitment Kelly believes that finding your path in life needs an openness to learn and the help to get there. He wants to inspire people to achieve their life goals through the stories of those who are further along the road. He is a director of an award-winning recruitment company and has won several international awards on a personal basis, including being chosen from 27,000 entrants as the No 1 Recruiter Award at the 2012 Recruiter Awards.

With an academic background in Business and a Masters in Strategic Management Planning from the Smurfit Business School he regularly hosts meet ups in Ireland and the UK.

Sean Lynch

OpenLitterMap.com is a web-based Citizen Science game that enables anyone to map, reveal, communicate and resolve litter (e.g. cigarette butts, plastic bottles etc.) anywhere on the globe using any device- just log in! Users can submit geotagged images and tag litter to gain experience points, Level Up and compete in multiple different leaderboards if they choose to go public. In 2010 alone, it is estimated that between 8-20 million tonnes of plastic made its way into the ocean, which is expected to rise to ~70 million tonnes annually by 2025 assuming current trends continue (Jambeck et al. 2015). The most realistic way of counteracting this is by opening up basic geospatial data (co-ordinates, time-stamp and litter data), which OpenLitterMap facilitates by design. All data from OpenLitterMap is mapped in hyper-spatial resolution, geospatially, quantitatively and categorically analysed and free to download by anyone.
Website: Open Litter Map
LinkedIn: Sean Lynch

Michelle Stowe
Michelle Stowe is a restorative practitioner, trainer and consultant. She is passionate about creating well-being and happiness in the workplace; and particularly interested in re-culturing schools and cultivating a restorative paradigm shift that honours community and connection. Michelle also works with schools, communities and organisations that need support in resolving conflict between people. She is particularly interested in supporting others to turn towards and see themselves in one another in times of conflict. Being involved in this work allows her to feel that the life she is living is the same as the life that wants to live in her.
Website: Connect RP
Twitter: @connect_rp  @mstowerp

Shane Breslin

Shane Breslin is a self-employed digital media and communications consultant, helping individuals, businesses and organisations find their voice online and go from surviving to thriving in the digital landscape. He is former Editorial Director of Maximum Media, named in 2017 by the Financial Times as one of Europe's 250 fastest growing companies, and has managed digital communications for leading Irish charities including the Irish Cancer Society and Age Action. He lives in rural County Meath with his wife Lorraine, children Cara and Shay - and Mrs D, the maddest and most maddening of Irish terriers.
Twitter: @shanebreslin
LinkedIn: Shane Breslin

Conor Heffernan

Conor is a current IRC and Universities Ireland History scholar at University College Dublin. Currently researching the role of exercise in Irish men and women’s lives from 1890 to 1939, Conor is deeply interested in the meanings attached to physical fitness by individuals and states alike. Outside the University, Conor runs physicalculturestudy.com, a history of fitness website, which has worked on collaborative projects with several different groups in the hope of raising people’s understandings of health and fitness. One of the most popular is a history of the treadmill animation with the education body, Ted-Ed.
Website:  www.physicalculturestudy.com
Twitter:  @PhysCstudy

Edel Browne
20 year old Edel Browne (centre) is the founder of Free Feet Medical, which is developing a multi-award winning device designed to treat gait freezing for people with Parkinson's disease. She is a past participant on the STEMette's Outbox Incubator in London, a founding member of the Digital Youth Council of Ireland, a past ambassador for The AAT Project and Nissan Generation Next and Global Teen Leader for Three Dot Dash and the We Are Family Foundation. Edel is also an alumnus of the London International Youth Science Forum and has been named as one of 200 “Founders of The Future” at a reception in No. 10, Downing St. Edel is currently Entrepreneur in Residence at the NUI Galway Blackstone Launchpad and is also studying for a BSc in Biotechnology at NUI Galway. She was listed among the Top 38 Women in Tech by Technology Voice and named as Outstanding Young Person of the year by JCI Galway in 2016. She is also a past Best Individual winner of the BT Young Scientist and People's choice winner on the NDRC Health Tech Pre Accelerator programme in association with eHealth Ireland. Edel has also been named in the '30 under 30' lists by the Sunday Business Post (2016 & 2017), and U Magazine as well as the '20 under 20' list by the journal.ie in 2017. She was also accepted to the prestigious Ignite Programme in Entrepreneurship & Management at the University of Cambridge in 2017. 

Padraig Hyland
Padraig Hyland is an audience engagement specialist and works with people to help them engage and excite audiences around their ideas. He has worked with TEDx Tallaght as a speaker coach for a number of years and his passion is helping people find their authentic voice. His company The Core Story has developed a unique process to enable business to communicate with an audience. As well an extensive international business career he has also worked a professional Stand-up Comedian.
Website:  thecorestory.com

John Glynn
John Glynn is Gavin’s father and the founder and Director of The Gavin Glynn Foundation. John's background is in Information Security and I.T, and while Gavin was in treatment he spent all his spare time reading medical articles and reaching out to other specialists from all corners of the globe to find the best treatment options for Gavin. John has since built up a large network of medical specialists from all over the world. 

When Gavin passed in October 2014, John & Jayne knew that they must continue on and use their expertise and knowledge which they had gained while caring for Gavin to help other children with cancer and their families in Ireland and continue Gavin’s legacy. To date, The Gavin Glynn Foundation has helped 22 families from Ireland who need to travel overseas for specialist cancer treatment. 

Twitter: @teamgavinglynn

Facebook: The Gavin Glynn Foundation 

Website: The Gavin Glynn Foundation 

Alice McCullogh
Alice McCullough is an award-winning performance poet from Belfast. Her one-woman show 'Earth To Alice' has gained critical acclaim in festivals across NI and she continues to find new and engaging ways of sharing and showcasing spoken word, from her various 'Red Pill' collaborative projects to her 'Alice Fresco' outdoor performances, her diverse adventures in poetry have taken her from performing on Belfast benches to poetry bus tours to an upcoming performance in The Royal Albert Hall. She has supported talents in poetry, comedy and music including Hollie McNish, Katherine Ryan, Duke Special and Lemn Sissay, among others. Alice's unique way with words has won her a presence on local and international radio with poems commissioned for both TV (BBC The Arts Show) and radio (BBC Talkback, BBC Arts Extra and U105).
Twitter: @earthtoalice
Facebook: Alice McCullough Poet
YouTube: Alice McCullough Playlist
Soundcloud: Alice McCullough 

Niall Morahan

Niall Morahan is a service designer and strategist working between Dublin and London.
He helps people with complex problems to break them down and understand them, and people with big ideas to turn them into tangible and lasting changes to the world. He uses a variety of methods from design, social science and business.
In 2014 he set up a social enterprise called Project 42 which helps young people develop confidence, empathy, teamwork and creativity through designing the city of the future. In 2017, he brought Project 42 to Dublin in partnership with IT Tallaght, South Dublin Libraries, Foróige and the SFI.

Website: Niall Morahan
LinkedIn: Niall Morahan

Gerard Ryder
Gerard is a lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the Institute of Technology Tallaght. With interests in hydroponics, robotics and sustainable energy he is currently one of lead investigators in the Fiosracht project. A collaboration between the Institute of Technology, Foroige and Tallaght Library. The project is funded by SFI under the Discover programme. The principle aim of the the Fiosracht project is to develop a discovery centre hosted in Tallaght library that will run a series of 1 day and 1 week camps in which children explore the issues that face society in the 21st Century.
Website: Fiosracht
Twitter: Fiosracht