Helen has delivered Ambition, Donegal’s first female business accelerator program, to three cohorts, successfully supporting the development of a strong pipeline of female-led businesses. Our cohorts benefitted from a robust format and methodology and Helen’s breadth of knowledge and contacts within the industry. The Ambition program also gave entrepreneurs in Donegal access to role models and the opportunity to learn from contributors and experts in various fields. I have found Helen to be a trusted service provider: she is extremely thorough and easy to work with, and relying on her as a partner, year after year, has been key to the success of Ambition.

As the Chair of IDEATE Ireland, I cannot speak highly enough about Helen. She brings energy, enthusiasm and professionalism to all that she does. The glowing feedback she has received from participants on our Competition Bootcamp speaks to her credentials as an educator and as somebody who goes the extra mile to support her entrepreneurs. The results speak for themselves.

With Engage, we launched a pioneering training program for female researchers at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey. Helen designed and delivered Europe’s first fully digital ideation stage entrepreneurship training for women. By thoughtfully designing the program, Helen supported participants who often face systemic barriers and gender bias. The women benefited from one-on-one mentoring sessions, a selection of excellent speakers, and exposure to female role models from industry and research. Our European cohort was very satisfied with the learning outcome and would highly recommend Engage to their peers. I enjoy working with Helen as her reliable, structured and focused way of working makes it possible to bring the programme to life quickly. I appreciate her immediate support in every way and look forward to working with Helen in the future.

Since 2017, Tyndall National Institute has worked with Helen to develop a bespoke pre-commercialization program that moves our researchers seamlessly from ideation through pre-acceleration towards grant and investor readiness. It has been and continues to be an interesting and exciting journey. Program content is relevant and contextual, and the speakers and domain experts are excellent.

CONNECT piloted the Emerge ideation training program to help researchers identify commercial opportunities as part of our commitment to increasing the number of spin-outs associated with research. Scholars at Masters, PhD, and postdoctoral levels from three national Research Centres—CONNECT, Confirm and Lero—took part. The Emerge program successfully identified entrepreneurial talent and new ideas, and the feedback from participants has been terrific. Following the successful completion of the workshops, 64% of participating researchers secured a place on national pre-accelerator programs to validate their ideas further and prepare for grant funding applications. I plan to commission the program once again in 2023.

CONNECT is Science Foundation Ireland’s Research Center for Future Networks and Communications, with a mission to research and develop innovative solutions for society’s communications challenges. We engaged Alinea to lead the process when CONNECT needed a high-level roadmap and work packages to enhance entrepreneurial capability. The breadth of Alinea’s unique insight, experience and understanding of the commercialization of research make them an ideal partner for research and enterprise organizations. Over a series of structured workshops with the Senior Team, implementation experts Helen and Carl helped us to develop and shape a strategy. Their highly engaging approach was thorough and action-oriented, and they created a collaborative atmosphere which fostered a healthy debate on the future we must plan for. I look forward to continuing to work with them and highly recommend their services.