Meet Our Board

As a not-for-profit, charitable status company, Oxfam Ireland is governed by a maximum of 11 unpaid Trustees, known as Council or Board members. New members are recruited through advertisements in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland while other potential candidates are identified by the existing Council and the Chief Executive Officer.

Members are appointed for a maximum of two three-year terms. After a potential candidate has been interviewed, the Chair decides whether to recommend a candidate for appointment. This is discussed at the next Board meeting where a decision is taken. If appointed, the new member is given a letter of appointment and induction materials including a copy of the Code of Conduct – which they must sign – and a copy of the Conflict of Interest policy. A formal induction process is designed for the new Board member to ensure that they get information on the organisation and its operations over the first three months of their tenure. This includes spending time in different areas of the organisation and if possible, going on a field visit to Oxfam Ireland’s programme work within the first year.

A Board committee on remuneration and performance selects the Chief Executive and sets pay rates for the Chief Executive and senior staff. For every paid member of staff, Oxfam Ireland has the support of approximately 10 volunteers. We could not carry out our work without this key support from people countrywide and we value it greatly.

Mary Ma Appointed to Council 20/04/2018

Appointed as Chair 8/09/2023

Mary Murphy is Head of Department and Professor in the Department of Sociology, Maynooth University, with research interests in ecosocial welfare, gender, care and social security, globalisation and welfare states, and power and civil society. She co-edited The Irish Welfare state in the 21st Century Challenges and Changes (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2016) and authored Creating an Ecosocial Future (Policy Press, May 2023). An active advocate for social justice and gender equality, she was appointed to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (2013-217) and is currently a member of the Council of State in Ireland.

Andrew Mc Cracken Appointed 20/04/2018

Andrew McCracken is Global Director of WaterAid International, the world’s largest NGO focused on getting clean water, decent toilets, and good hygiene to everyone, everywhere. After originally studying Physics, he has worked on major organisational development projects, led highly successful national fundraising campaigns, facilitated significant change within local and international charities, and provided advice and support for charity leaders on people and fundraising issues. His previous roles include leading the Community Foundation in Northern Ireland and serving as Global Fundraising Director for Tearfund. Andrew and his partner Harriet are based in Belfast and have a large and noisy family of fostered, adopted and birth children.

Deirdre Grant Appointed 20/04/2018

Deirdre Grant is the Managing Director of communications consultancy firm Red Flag. She provides strategic advice to her clients’ senior management teams, bringing her 20 years’ experience in communications and public affairs to assist them in winning in business and media. Before she joined Red Flag, she worked as a special adviser to two Cabinet ministers, as a director of public affairs, a head of communications for international NGOs and as a national broadcast journalist. She has extensive contacts in politics, media and the corporate world. Her experience in government means she is acutely aware of how policy and legislation is formed and influenced. Ms Grant has worked in international development in South Africa and Haiti, including being part of an emergency response team in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake there. She also has a Masters in HIV/AIDS from the University of Cape Town.

Alf Smiddy Appointed 28/06/2019

Alf is a chartered accountant who trained with PwC. He was Chairman and Managing Director of Beamish & Crawford plc for over 12 years and on the Board of its parent company, Scottish & Newcastle (UK) Ltd. He is a member of the National Executive Council of IBEC, Director of Cork Chamber of Commerce, Chairman of the Cork Local Government Committee and served on the Board of Cork Airport Authority. He is a Fellow of the Irish Marketing Institute and a Commerce graduate from University College Cork (UCC), with a Masters in Executive Leadership from Boston College and the University of Ulster. External appointments include: Adjunct Professor at the College of Business and Law, UCC; Director of the Government-backed Rethink Ireland (Social Innovation); Non-Executive Director of the ESB; Chairman and/or Director of various independent companies including Bridgewater Construction Ltd, Aperee Ltd (healthcare) and Granite Digital (Digital Marketing). Alf served as Senior Independent Non-Executive Director and Director with designated responsibility for workforce engagement at The Dalata Hotel Group Plc.

Catherine Gaynor Appointed 19/06/2020

Catherine Gaynor has worked as a planner, evaluator, researcher, trainer and technical director in development programmes spanning many countries for 40 years. This has included nine years across three full-time assignments in Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Malawi and multiple short- and long-term assignments for a range of multilateral, bilateral and non-governmental organisations. She has a BSc from NUIG and a Masters in Social Policy and Planning from London School of Economics. Particular areas of expertise include gender equality and results-based management. Most recently, she led on the design and was Technical Director for a five-year innovative programme in Nigeria working to change harmful norms related to gender-based violence and opposition to women’s leadership and decision making. The primary target group was young women and men but also other key influencers. The programme has generated cutting-edge learning related to changing gender norms and the measurement of change. Cathy recently went back to her roots in Co. Clare and currently engages both locally and globally on development issues.

Joyce_Bourne Appointed 27/09/2021

Joyce Bourne worked for over 30 years in diplomacy and public service. She served in senior positions in the Foreign Service of Barbados, including postings at the Permanent Mission of Barbados to the Organisation of American States; the Consulate-General of Barbados at Miami; and the Permanent Mission of Barbados to the United Nations in New York. She has extensive experience in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy as well as the implementation of foreign policy, particularly on social, political, economic and environmental issues. She is an advocate for development issues, focusing on improving people’s lives, poverty eradication and global sustainability. She has a strong background in administration and management, having served as Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Barbados and Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Attorney General of Barbados. Ms. Bourne holds a Bachelor’s degree in Language and Linguistics from the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus; a post-graduate diploma in international relations from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus; a Master’s degree in Linguistics from Georgetown University, Washington, DC and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC. She relocated to Ireland in 2020.

Donal Rooney Appointed 27/09/2021

Dónal Rooney is a chartered accountant, experienced business leader and highly accomplished Group CFO with an outstanding reputation for building and leading high-performing finance functions whilst acting as a trusted strategic business partner to CEOs and boards. He has 25-years’ experience operating in plc, private equity and public sector environments. He has significant board-level experience and is highly skilled across financial management, treasury, tax, M&A, investor relations and transformational change. Dónal has a demonstrable track record of success across four Group CFO roles including NAMA (deleveraging a €74 billion highly-distressed, real estate-backed loan portfolio) and Amaris Hospitality, a Lone Star portfolio company (leading a £2 billion enterprise value PE exit). Dónal currently acts as an independent business advisor. He is also a non-executive director with Enterprise Ireland.

Yvonne Byrne Appointed 13/10/2021

Yvonne Byrne is a Partner in Deloitte Digital in Dublin, Ireland. Yvonne works with clients across industry on their customer and digital transformation agenda, specialising in customer experience analysis and design, channel strategy and management, sales and service transformation and new proposition development. She has over 20 years within the UK Financial Services and consulting industry, having previously worked with the Royal Bank of Scotland, Tesco Bank and KPMG UK. Yvonne has extensive experience in all aspects of customer experience, growth strategy, product management, customer and channel strategy and new proposition development.

Nellie Nyangwa Appointed 13/10/2021

For over 30 years, Nellie has held various roles in the development sector. For 21 of those years, the roles were within the Oxfam family. Prior to joining Oxfam, Nellie worked for World Vision International as Associate Director of Micro Finance where she advocated and successfully led in the setting up of an independent Micro Finance Organisation which focused on micro and small enterprises. Nellie joined the Oxfam Malawi country office in 1999 as Programme Coordinator, responsible for managing grants to partners and two years later was appointed Malawi Country Director. Nellie successfully ran, for the first time in the history of the country office, a major humanitarian response in 2001/2002, and later in 2004/2005 advocated to Oxfam to have a locally-led response which eventually transformed the way Oxfam resourced humanitarian responses. In 2006, Nellie was appointed Regional Programme and Campaigns Manager for Oxfam, based in the Southern Africa office in Pretoria, South Africa. In 2010, she moved back into a Country Director role in the Zambia country office in order to be with her family. In 2015, Nellie was appointed Oxfam International Regional Director for Southern Africa based in Lilongwe, Malawi. Nellie left Oxfam in 2021, having led the region to transform its operating model from a country-based programme model to a regional approach which has offered Oxfam an innovative and alternative approach within the context of shrinking resources. Nellie now spends her time supporting the development of family business interests in hospitality, farming and consultancy.