Padraig McKeon is a specialist senior advisor on strategy for communications, communications capacity building in organisations and issue and crisis communications management. Padraig is a recognised and respected leader in the Irish public relations and communications management marketplace, with almost 40 years of practice across a mix of the commercial, the public and the third sectors.  

In recent years, his focus has been more on working with non-profit and volunteer organisations where in addition to his work as a professional advisor he also has extensive experience as a board and board committee member in a range of settings. He is a qualified Trainer, active nationally and internationally, and since 2016, he has been teaching on a number of master’s degree programmes at Dublin City University.  

Since 2023, he has also been co-running ConversationsFest, a salon conference for PR and communications practitioners in his native Sligo. Padraig is a fellow of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland, a Chartered Practitioner of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in the UK and a globally certified Strategic Communications Management Professional by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). 

Andy Green FRSA is a UK-based cofounder of the Dublin Conversations, social enterprise Grow Social Capital, the Modern Cockney Festival, and part-time university lecturer. 

His work enables individuals, teams, and organizations to transform their brand storytelling, creativity, and purposefulness to realise their potential and seize untapped opportunities around them. He even runs creativity classes on the London Tube. 

His passion is for co-creating new thinking and doing to enable anyone working in the PR, communications and Comms industries to both do their jobs better and be fitter for purpose in enabling wider society to overcome growing social division, polarisation, and distrust. 

Author of ‘Creativity in Public Relations’ - the world’s first book on the subject, and five other texts on creative communications, translated into eight languages. He has lectured in every Continent (apart from South America and Antartica). 

Claire McGowaran is We Act Campaign Manager with The Wheel. She is working closely with a pan-sectoral steering group on an exciting new campaign to improve public awareness of the value and impact of the charity and community sector in Ireland. 

Her background is in communications. She has have a degree in Journalism from DCU and she has written for various newspapers and magazines, and she was was a digital editor for eight years. Her interest in campaigns was sparked by my involvement in the campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment in 2018. Living in London at the time, she volunteered with the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign as an organiser for Home To Vote. Se has also worked with UNICEF on a campaign to end child marriage and contributed to the Emigrant Papers as part of the campaign to expand voting rights for Irish emigrants. 

Outside of work, she loves baking, crafting, food and travel. She also has a side venture where she interviews people about their lives, and packages it up as a personalised audio memoir.