Hi! I’m Mary Whelan, and I’m a training consultant specializing in Creative and Whole Brain Thinking, and I work mostly with SME’s. I get a buzz from working with people who run their own businesses, because they’re generally pretty creative to start with, and I admire the dedication entrepreneurs have with regard to making their businesses succeed. I also deliver programmes on Team Building, Life/Work Balance and an Introduction to NLP. (See Services)
When I left school I studied Architecture for 2 years. Unfortunately, much as I loved the design element, my physics and chemistry weren’t up to scratch and so I threw in the towel to become a graphic designer instead. I did this for about 13 years, and loved it most of the time. When my children were small I worked from home, which meant I didn’t have to farm them out to be minded. I’m very grateful to have had that time with them. I now have a daughter who’s an Industrial Designer, and a son who’s studing Visual Communications - so my influence seems to have rubbed off on them!
Later, when I got too tired of designing Christmas cards year after year, I went back to college and did a masters degree in Theatre Studies. For my thesis I worked with a group of prisoners in Mountjoy Prison, to study the effect of drama as a means of personal development. From there I studied NLP and coaching, and after about 3 years of working with psychiatric patients, I began to move into the world of business, working in 3rd level colleges and with business owners / managers.
I love the world of entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation. I get very excited about people having ideas and going to the ends of the earth to bring them to reality. We’ve a fairly strong entrepreneurial ethos in Ireland, and I think that’s something to be very positive and optimistic about.
I’m also a mosaic artist. I like to be able to balance my work between the head and the hands! Working with tiny pieces of mosaic is very therapeutic. I’m self-taught, you can see some of my mosaic work on www.mosaicart.ie
Here is a photo story board of a piece I created for a school in Monaghan.
