UCD EDI Annual Event: 20 May 2025
EDI in a Changing Environment and shaping the EDI Action Plan 2025 - 2030
UCD EDI Annual Event: EDI in a Changing Environment and shaping the EDI Action Plan 2025 - 2030
EDI is delighted to invite you to the EDI Annual Event, focus on EDI in a Changing Environment and shaping the EDI Action Plan 2025 - 2030.
The purpose of this discussion is to explore how we sustain equality, diversity and inclusion efforts in a challenging environment and remain steadfast to the strategies put in place over the years. The discussion will look at the positive impacts of EDI in organisations, the challenges being experienced in the current climate and the future path for EDI. It will provide the opportunity to rethink and refresh our approaches to EDI and contribute to a collective discussion about how we are shaping the future of EDI in higher education in Ireland and more broadly.
A consultation session will follow the panel discussion to help shape the EDI action plan for the next 5 years.
Conference Details
Date20 May 2025
Time from 9.30 am – 2 pm (including lunch)
LocationBelfield campus
Book nowEvent Outline:
Registration (tea/coffee) 9:30 – 10:00
MC: Professor Aoife Ahern, Vice-President for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Opening Address 10:00 – 10.10
Keynote speaker 10:10 – 11:00
Mark Pollock: Explorer, Speaker & Researcher
Panel Discussion 11:00 – 11:50
The Panel will be discussing the challenges that are being experienced in the current climate and strategies and fresh approaches as regards the future of EDI.
Consultation on EDI Action Plan 12:00 – 13:00
Lunch: 13:00 - 14:00
Mark Pollock
Everything (opens in a new window)Mark Pollock does is about inspiring leaders and their teams to build resilience, optimise performance and collaborate with others so that they achieve more than they thought possible.
Unbroken by blindness in 1998, Mark became an adventure athlete competing in ultra-endurance races across deserts, mountains, and the polar ice caps including being the first blind person to race to the South Pole. He also won silver and bronze medals for rowing at the Commonwealth Games and set up an international motivational speaking business.
In 2010, a fall from a second story window nearly killed him. Mark broke his back and the damage to his spinal cord left him paralysed. Now he is on a new expedition, this time exploring the intersection where humans and technology collide to cure paralysis in our lifetime.
Chairman of Collaborative Cures and founder of the global running series Run in the Dark, Mark has been involved in catalysing collaborations worth over $100 million on his mission to cure paralysis. He was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader, served on the Global Futures Council on Human Enhancement and the Advisory Board of Cybathlon. In addition, he is a Wings for Life Ambassador (Europe) and was on the Board of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation (USA) for a decade.
Currently Mark is pursuing a Professional Doctorate in Elite Performance (Sport) at Dublin City University, he is author of ‘Making It Happen’ and is the subject of the acclaimed documentaries' Blind Man Walking ’and ‘Unbreakable – The Mark Pollock Story’. Mark has been awarded honorary doctorates by The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and also from Queens University Belfast. Furthermore, he holds a diploma in Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century from Harvard University, degrees from Trinity College Dublin and UCD Smurfit Graduate Business School.