Before qualifying from UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, Aoife studied General Nursing in the National University of Ireland Galway. While in her second year of undergraduate studies in General Nursing, Aoife began a Business Management Degree in Galway Business School. Throughout her undergraduate degrees Aoife worked across a variety of part-time customer service jobs. Aoife pursued leadership positions through Class Representative posts and was the Student Chair for the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organization, representing over 7000 nursing and midwifery students nationwide. Aoife engaged heavily in highlighting the poor conditions in which student nurses in Ireland were working and was delighted to participate in the successful payment restoration deal. By September 2016 Aoife simultaneously completed her degrees achieving academic excellence in both. Aoife then received an Aspire entrance Scholarship to Smurfit and pursued an MSc in International Business.  

During her time in Smurfit, Aoife engaged in a variety of extra-curricular activities. Aoife contributed to Smurfit through regular feedback and Student Think tank days. She also worked as a General Nurse, with a particular focus on Care of the Elderly across Private and Community Healthcare. Aoife provided physical and psychological support to patients on a daily basis. Aoife participated in the Darkness into Light run to raise funds for Pieta House and the VHI Women’s Mini Marathon to raise funds for Ability Equine Assisted Therapy (AEAT). Aoife also volunteered with AEAT supporting children and adults with physical, emotional and cognitive difficulties through the delivery of Therapeutic Horse Riding Sessions, Seasonal Children’s Camps and Stable Management.

Aoife initially completed an internship with EY during her undergraduate degrees. As an intern she worked on a range of consulting assignments in Healthcare and Utilities organizations - combining her love of business and nursing. She successfully secured a place on EY’s Graduate Programme and started as an Advisory Consultant upon completion of her MSc in 2017. EY is a purpose led organization – its stated purpose is to build a better working world. Aoife is working as part of the Healthcare Practice, which is dedicated to working in acute environments to improve patient care and the working environment of front line medical teams.  She is currently engaged in a major transformation of Children’s Healthcare working on the clinical integration worksteam. Her training in Nursing and wider skills gained through her MSc have been critical to her success.

Jeremy recently graduated from Commerce and is now working for Enterprise Ireland to help Irish companies export. He is currently based in London and working across Financial Services and Lifesciences sectors. A day in Enterprise Ireland ranges from discussing the application of Irish Fintech start-ups with the head of innovation in a Canary Wharf bank to doing desk research identifying opportunities to work with UK pharmaceutical companies.

While Jeremy studied in Quinn Business School he was involved in two student organisations; The UCD Investors & Entrepreneurs Society and Irish Student Consulting Group. The Investors & Entrepreneurs society grew more than 50% to over 1,300 members while Jeremy was president in his final year. The society completed projects and hosted over seventy events across nine key programs ranging from a €12,000 student-managed investment fund to a start-up weekend which brought together entrepreneurs from different fields to develop an idea and prototype within 54 hours. Jeremy joined Irish Student Consulting Group as a consultant during second year when the organisation started its first project. He stayed involved by joining the management team who scaled the group to several Irish universities and leading some of the initiatives which enabled its growth, such as training new members and setting up a sister organisation in Tanzania. Jeremy also completed two corporate internships spending fourteen months working in Microsoft and a month in AIB’s Data Department.

Jeremy is ambitious, hardworking and passionate about social justice. He intends to build a scalable business or social enterprise at some point in his career and is currently building up the skills, resources, and connections to make that possible.

Before becoming a UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School student, Kate studied Health and Performance Science in UCD. She received an academic Entrance Scholarship to the university and graduated in 2015, finishing top of her class with a First Class Honours degree. Kate took part in many extra curricular activities during her undergraduate and MSc studies. She was a UCD Choral Scholar and toured America with the choir in 2014. She represented the university as a member of the UCD Ladies Hockey Club and spent a semester on the college’s Study Abroad programme in Vancouver. Kate also volunteered in Tanzania with the UCD Volunteers Overseas, teaching IT skills to members of the Mikumi community.

Kate joined the UCD Smurfit MSc in Management programme in 2015. She maintained a very high academic standard throughout the year, while still contributing to the UCD community. Having represented the UCD hockey club for four years, Kate captained her team to second place in the Leinster League. She was a member of the UCD Choral Scholars group that sang at the Hans Zimmer concert in the 3Arena. She also fundraised to travel to the United States with the Smurfit Tag Rugby team for the MBA Rugby World Cup, where they competed with the world’s top business schools including London Business School, Harvard University and New York University.

During the MSc, Kate was accepted on to the Diageo Graduate Programme. Diageo is a global leader in beverage alcohol with an outstanding collection of brands including Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff and Baileys. Kate is now working and loving her role as a Commercial Executive in the company.

Kieran is a postgraduate economics student at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE). His interests include welfare analysis & policy evaluation, particularly in developing countries. 

Prior to moving to London, Kieran undertook research work as a statistician at the Central Statistics Office (CSO), which highlighted on the labour market impact of Foreign Direct Investment in Ireland. 

Kieran completed the BSc Economics & Finance at the UCD Quinn School of Business in 2016. As part of this degree, he also completed a semester abroad at the University of Toronto.

During his time in Quinn, he represented his class at the Staff/Student forum, which worked towards the continuous development of the programmes offered by the school. Elsewhere, Kieran sat on the committee of the UCD Economics Society and on the committee of the UCD Volunteers Overseas (UCDVO) Student Society. With UCDVO, Kieran also taught in Tanzania as part of the Volunteering & Development Education Programme.

Goutham Krishnamoorthy is a consultant at Prospectus Management Consultants, a leading healthcare and life sciences consulting firm in Dublin. Founded in 1991, the company works with an extremely diverse range of organisations. Much of their work focuses on helping clients with strategy development and implementation.

Before coming to Ireland, Goutham worked for 4 years in India with the top 2 business conglomerates ITC and Tata, in their hospitality SBU. He has worked across multiple locations in India and his role primarily involved pricing and commercial strategy deployment for luxury hotels.

He joined the MSc in Management Consultancy programme at the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School in 2014. He was elected the class representative and was provided a scholarship to represent the college at Neoma Business School in France. He was instrumental in organising the 1st Smurfit Case competition, which attracted participants from 12 different MSc streams and 10 different nationalities. He graduated with a 1st Class honours in September 2015.

Goutham holds a Bachelors degree in Hospitality Administration from IHM Chennai. He achieved all India 1st rank in his under graduation and was a recipient of multiple scholarships for academic excellence from the Tourism Ministry, Government of India. He was the President of the Students’ Welfare Association in his college.

Goutham, also holds a Bachelors degree in Business Administration and a Masters degree in Commerce from the University of Madras. Additionally he has completed a post graduation diploma in Strategic Management from Symbiosis University.

He is a technology enthusiast, follows cricket and collects sim cards as a hobby.

Nita Killian finished her four-year Commerce International with Chinese degree in UCD and is currently studying the Master of Accounting in UCD’s Smurfit Graduate Business School.

Nita is delighted to have studied with UCD, which is somewhat evidenced by how she chose to continue studying for an additional year in her sister school. Nita found her undergraduate degree mind opening – she was introduced to the business world and found a new passion in the form of Chinese language. Over these four years she has made some of her closest friends.

In fact, Chinese language study has become one of Nita’s greatest hobbies. She has found it riveting to learn a language so different from her own. However, learning Chinese doesn’t stop with the language. Chinese culture is so very different and she was fortunate to have in some way been given guided insight by her Chinese teachers. Nita spent the third year of her undergraduate degree in the hectically fascinating cultural and business capitals of Beijing and Shanghai. Being in this environment, surrounded by friends from UCD, made this one of the most memorable years of her life. Last summer, having won the Chinese Bridge Competition in Dublin, Nita was fortunate enough to return to China to represent Ireland in a televised international event in Changsha. This has fueled her with desire to ever improve her Chinese speaking ability.

Perhaps why Nita found Chinese so enticing in the first place is her love for music. Mandarin’s four tones, each requiring different vocal direction, strikes a cord with her memories of dulcet tones from protégé singers seeping through the walls when attending her piano lessons in the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Nita has always loved music, and has played the piano from the age of seven. Throughout her childhood Nita continued to practice, sit exams and perform in different events, culminating in winning the Feis Ceoil Esposito Cup in 2012, the Royal Irish Academy’s Dina Copeman Cup in 2015 and receiving a Diploma of Licentiate (Performance) last July.

This year Nita has chosen to focus on accounting. This was her favourite subject as far back as in the leaving cert and has always been her favourite business module in UCD. In an ideal world Nita would love to be able to combine business with her greatest pleasures in life; Chinese and music.

Emma is a solicitor in the tax practice at Matheson.  She advises on a broad range of tax issues including the tax consequences of doing business in and from Ireland, employment-related taxes and tax issues arising in the context of property and insolvency matters.  In particular, Emma has advised domestic property developers and construction groups on corporate structuring, project finance, property acquisition and the various tax issues that come up in the course of their business.  She has also advised various international and domestic corporates on their Irish operations and deals with the tax issues arising in respect of the acquisition and sale of Irish corporates. 

Emma graduated from the BComm International (with Italian) at the UCD Quinn School of Business in 2011 with a first class honours degree and fluent Italian, having received an academic entrance scholarship to the university.  In 2009, Emma studied abroad in the University of Modena, Italy.

Since graduating, Emma qualified as a solicitor with The Law Society of Ireland in 2016 and qualified as a chartered tax advisor with the AITI in 2017.   She represented Ireland at the Brown Mosten Client Consultation Competition held in Puerto Rico in 2014, and took first place along with her teammate.

Emma took part in many extra-curricular activities during her time at UCD.  She represented her class at the Staff/Student forum, which worked towards the continuous development of the programmes offered by the Quinn School. She was also a committee member of the Erasmus society, she tutored disadvantaged secondary level students as part of the UCD NewERA programme and she was a member of the skiing and dance societies.

In her spare time, Emma sings with the Discovery Gospel Choir, enjoys salsa dancing and volunteers with an Irish charity. She has an interest in legal technology, taking part in hackathons and working on legal innovation projects as part of the Smart@Matheson initiative.