Maria O’Gorman is from Listowel in County Kerry. For many years she worked as an accountant for a manufacturing company. She does a lot of work in the adult education sector and represents adult learners on a variety of committees and she is on the board of Kerry Education and Training Board (ETB). Maria is also on the board of Irish Rural Link, which is the national network representing rural communities.

Ciaran Casey is the Head of Digital Channels at AIB where he has responsibility for Mobile and Internet Banking, iBusiness Banking and Group Websites. Prior to this he held a number of roles across the Products and Propositions functions with his most recent previous role being Group Head of Deposit and Current Account Products. Ciaran is a Chartered Banker and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder. Ciaran joined the Board of NALA in March 2020.

Catherine Devlin is an adult literacy student from Buncrana in County Donegal. She worked in a shirt factory from the age of 15 years having left school early after struggled daily at school. Catherine started back to education in 2013 on the ‘Learning for Living’ programme with Donegal Education and Training Board (ETB). She worked her way to doing the Junior Certificate through day, night and summer classes. She really enjoyed learning this second time around.  She found that tutors had kindness, patience and an understanding of pupils who had struggled at school from an early age. This made going back to education a pure joy for her. In 2017, Catherine gave a talk at an ETB event in Letterkenny and then joined NALA’s Student Subcommittee. She is currently vice-chairperson of the Subcommittee. She looks forward to being the link between the Student Subcommittee and the Board and learning more about all NALA’s work.

Elma Teahan is a director in the Financial Services Audit department in KPMG. A chartered accountant, Elma also holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from University College Cork (UCC).

She has 12 years’ experience providing audit, assurance, accountancy and advisory services to clients in insurance, investment management, banking and other sectors. Elma is an advocate of education and inclusion and diversity.

She was co-opted to NALA’s Board in December 2020 to make a difference in education by supporting adult literacy and numeracy in Ireland. Elma is also a member of the Audit, Risk and Finance sub- committee of the Board.

Paula Tiller is Regional Literacy Coordinator for Kerry under the Adult Literacy for Life Strategy. She has been involved in literacy since 2001, volunteering as a one-to-one literacy tutor and working with groups and working with communities before that. Having literacy as social practice at the heart of her teaching, she has co-developed themed literacy programmes in personal development, making and selling crafts, creative writing,  and biodiversity and sustainability.

She is an advocate for integrating literacy and Universal Design for Learning across the adult and further education sector. She worked as a NALA distance learning tutor and has delivered workshops at NALA student days and tutor days.  She has completed the SETU Waterford Higher Certificate or arts in Literacy, and is currently engaged in a Master’s in Education that she hopes will contribute to environmental literacy being recognised as a core strand of literacy.