IWish Founders Awarded the Professional Excellence Award by Griffith College Cork

Pictured with Dr. Tomás Mac Eochagáin of Griffith College and Ingrid Seim,President of Network Cork Ireland, were: Gillian Keating, Caroline O'Driscoll and Sharon Lombard, directors of IWish, who were conferred with Professional Excellence Awards at Griffith College Cork's annual graduation ceremony.

Noel Daly, Deputy Head of Campus in Griffith College Cork, welcomed and congratulated the three winners in his address to the graduation ceremony.

He said, “This year, Griffith College Cork honours three people who have been, through their dedication and sense of civic duty, of great significance to the lives of many young women and girls at an important crossroads in their lives.”

“Gillian Keating and Caroline O’Driscoll are the co-founders of I Wish, an organisation that is encouraging girls to consider careers in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (or STEM). Together with Sharon Lombard, who joined the organisation as a Project Co-ordinator and is now a board member, the I Wish initiative is a volunteer-led community committed to showcasing STEM to female secondary school students.”

“The I Wish initiative celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and continues to go from strength to strength. Coincidentally, though GC is approaching 50 years old, we are celebrating ten years since we acquired this iconic building when we firmly and permanently planted our flag in Cork.”

“Both I Wish and GC share a common purpose in making education accessible and seeing it as a hugely positive and transformative force in people's lives. This year, a high and growing percentage of our graduates in Business, Law, Computing and the Pharma programmes are female.”

In her own address at the end of the ceremony, Gillian Keating, founder of I Wish and a partner at Ronan Daly Jermyn, leading their Corporate and Commercial Department, fittingly said, “When I look around the room today I see real power, and that’s invigorating.”