TIME & LOCATION
About
Chair
SPONSOR
Panel
Presenter, Journalist
Aoibhéann McCann is an actor, writer, eco-activist and parent. Best known for playing Geraldine in Series 1-4 of BLUE LIGHTS (BBC), she has also appeared in ELLIS (Channel 5), COAST (Charmer Pictures) CLEAN SWEEP (RTÉ), HARRY WILD (Acorn), and YIELD (Out of Orbit). On stage, she has starred in ‘Girl on an Altar’ and ‘Twinkletoes’ (both at the Abbey Theatre); and ‘Widow Quin', ‘The Playboy of the Western World’; ‘Blanche DuBois’, and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. In 2020, she was awarded Best Actress at the Irish Times Theatre Awards and is a participant of Screen Ireland’s X-Pollinator 2024 (a cross-disciplinary professional development and networking initiative for female, trans and non-binary talent in the film industry). She also runs production company “Athrach” – the focus is to make work as sustainably as possible and in 2023 they made the short film ‘The Last Harvest’. This production outdid the Albert calculator and worked with Native Events (their first film) to power the production off-grid with renewable energy. She recently wrote, directed and acted in the short film ‘Step in Time’ and another short film for The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan which will be launched in January 2025. In 2024, her theatre monologue ‘Humanitarian’ was presented by Landmark's Theatre-For-One at Cork Midsummer Festival and she is now developing it as a feature film. Aoibhéann studied French & Sociology in Maynooth University before training as an actor at the Oxford School of Drama.
Director of Raising Films Ireland
Director at Raising Films. Co-founder/Director of Green from Script to Screen consultancy, specialising in climate storytelling on screen, and sustainability onset. Development Producer/Script Editor/Producer, loves writers, loves scripts, shapes story from concept to development and onto funding. Builds GEDI creative teams, cast and crews and provides childcare on set. Menopausal mother of a preschooler (and an IVF advocate),and a returner to the industry, having previously cared for parents for eleven years.
Deputy Director at Melted Parents NI
Raissa is a Brazilian migrant with a background in human rights, equality and communications. She joined Melted Parents in April 2023 to support the campaign's communications and engagement strategy with a focus on politically mobilising supporters - including organising two marches that brought over 1,000 families to Belfast City Centre to protest for a better childcare sector - as well as building partnerships with other organisations campaigning for better early years education for all.
Head of Development at Stellify Media
Tom is Head of Development at Belfast-based Stellify Media, where he leads a busy slate of projects for UK broadcasters and global streamers. With over 15 years’ experience in television, Tom began his career in production, working on shows including The X Factor, This Morning and Robot Wars, before moving into senior development roles at The Garden, BBC Studios and Twenty Twenty. His commissions include Squid Game: The Challenge for Netflix, Titanic Sinks Tonight for BBC Two and Blind Date for Disney+. He's also dad to two young children, so knows first-hand the joys and challenges of balancing family life with a busy career in television.
Partner, A&L Goodbody
Emma-Jane Flannery is a Partner and Head of the Employment Team in Belfast with more than 22 years’ experience advising domestic and international clients on all aspects of employment and equality law. Emma-Jane is known for providing practical, commercially focused advice to employers across a wide range of sectors, supporting clients on day-to-day workplace issues as well as complex strategic projects and disputes. Emma-Jane advises on both contentious and non-contentious matters to include advice on executive appointments, remuneration and severance, TUPE advice arising out of corporate transactions and outsourcing arrangements, complex industrial relations matters, contracts, policies & best practice procedures. Emma-Jane regularly speak at seminars on employment law developments and provides tailored client training across a range of workplace issues
CEO of The Film and TV Charity
Marcus Ryder MBE has more than 25 years’ experience working in the media. Most recently he was Head of External Consultancies at the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, set up to explore and increase diversity across the media industry. He has worked around the world and previously, was a senior executive at the BBC, winning awards from BAFTA, the Royal Television Society, and the Foreign Press Association. He is also the Chair of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and is currently a trustee of the Press Pad Charitable Foundation. In 2022, he was named one of the 500 most influential people in the global film industry by Variety and has also been awarded the prestigious Percy Qoboza award in the US by the National Association of Black Journalists as one of its Foreign Journalists of the Year in 2023.