The Fulbright Commission’s Board is appointed by the US Ambassador and the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The Board comprises the following US members and Irish members.
US Members
Mr. John Hennessey-Niland
John Hennessey-Nilandis currently Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Dublin. Originally from Chicago, John lived for over a decade in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands in his youth. He received a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, Magna Cum Laude, from Tufts University and a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from the International Cycle of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. Mr. Hennessey-Niland joined the US diplomatic corps in 1988. His first diplomatic assignment was to Paris, France where he served in the Consular and Economic sections and as a Staff Aide to the Ambassador. He was acting Consul of the U.S. Consulate in Martinique in the summer of 1989. In 1990, he returned to Washington DC to be the Staff Aide to the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. In 1991 he was a Desk Officer at the Department of State and was seconded in 1992 to the US Organizing Committee of the 1994 FIFA World Cup. He was subsequently assigned to the UN International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. In 1997, he was appointed Head of the Political and Economic Section of the US Embassy in Fiji where he organized the evacuation of the American community during the 2000 coup d’état. In 2001, he returned to the US and was responsible for trade issues in the Bureau of European Affairs at the State Department. From 2003 to 2005 Mr. Hennessey-Niland was the Desk Officer for Danish and Norwegian Affairs and played a leading role in negotiations to establish a new civilian and military relationship between the US, Denmark and Greenland. In 2005, Mr. Hennessey-Niland was selected to attend France’s Grand Ecole, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration and served afterwards in the Economic Section of the US Embassy in Paris, where he was responsible for Trade and IPR. Mr. Hennessey-Niland served at the National Security Council at the White House as Director for the G-8 and G-20 Summits.
Ms. Kathleen O'Toole Kathleen M. O’Toole currently serves as Chief Inspector of the Garda Síochána Inspectorate, an oversight body responsible for bringing reform, best practice and accountability to the 17,000 member Irish national police service. Kathleen began her career in 1979 as a patrol officer in the Boston Police Department and rose through the ranks in Massachusetts law enforcement to Boston Police Commissioner where she managed three thousand sworn and civilian personnel and an annual budget of $235 million. She also served as Massachusetts Secretary of Public Safety, overseeing twenty agencies, more than 10,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $1 billion. In 1998, Kathleen was appointed to the Patten Commission in Northern Ireland. The group developed a new framework for policing there as part of the Peace Process. Kathleen received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College, a Juris Doctor degree from New England School of Law, was admitted to the bar to practice law in 1982 and is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. programme in the School of Business at Trinity College Dublin.
Ms. Karyn Posner-Mullen Karyn Posner-Mullen is currently Director of Public Affairs at the US Embassy in Dublin. She holds a BA degree in History and Sociology from Mount Holyoke College and a M.Ed from UCLA. Before joining the US Foreign Service in 1994, Karyn taught at American and International Schools around the world. She also worked in the film industry in Israel, Germany, Mexico and Los Angeles. Her first posting abroad was as Deputy Cultural Attaché in Caracas, Venezuela where she was in charge of the Fulbright Scholarships. From 1998-2002, Karyn was the Deputy Press Attaché in Rome, coordinating the media for four US Ambassadors. While in Budapest, Hungary 2003-2006, she was the Regional Director of the State Department’s European Hub for Environment, Science, Technology and Health, traveling to 12 countries. Karyn was Special Assistant to Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Karen Hughes in Washington, DC 2006-2007. Most recently Karyn was the Director of Public Affairs at the US Embassy in Pristina, Kosovo where she established
the first Fulbright Student scholarships in 2009.
Irish Members
Ms. Una Halligan, Chair Una Halligan is the Commission’s Chair and the Government & Public Affairs Director for Hewlett Packard, Ireland. Una was appointed to the board of the EGFSN (Expert Group on Future Skills Needs), by the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. She is on the Discover Science and Engineering Taskforce and was appointed to the National Centre for Technology Development by the Minister for Education and Science. Una has been Chair of the Fulbright Commission since February 2007 and a member of the Fulbright Commission Board since 2004.
Professor Geraldine McCarthy Geraldine McCarthy is Professor, Dean and Head of the Catherine McAuley School of Nursing and Midwifery at the National University of Ireland, Cork. She established the School in 1994 which is now one of 5 Schools in the College of Medicine and Health including Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy and Therapies. Prior to this she was Research and Development Manager for Nursing at Beaumont Hospital, Dublin and held a number of other positions in the UK, USA and Canada. She holds a MEd from TCD, MSN and PhD degree in Nursing from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She has been a member of a number of national and EU bodies including the Commission on Nursing, the Nurse Education Forum and the Task Force on Undergraduate Medical Education. She is presently a Ministerial nomination on the Health Information and Quality Authority Board. Her research focuses on Chronic Health Conditions and the Elderly.
Professor Timothy O’Brien Timothy O’Brien is Professor, Chairman of Medicine and Consultant Endocrinologist at Galway University Hospital and Director of the Regenerative Medicine Institute at NUI Galway. Professor O’Brien received a MB BCh BAO degree from UCC and his MD and PhD degrees from the National University of Ireland. Following an internship and professional training at Cork University Hospital, Professor O’Brien completed a residency in internal medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and an Endocrinology and Metabolism fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Professor O'Brien received a Mayo Foundation Scholarship to work at the University of California - San Francisco’s Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease. Before returning to Ireland in 2001, Professor O’Brien was Associate Professor of Medicine at Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, and Consultant with the Division of Endocrinology, Nutrition and Metabolism at Mayo Foundation. He is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians in Ireland and London, the American College of Physicians and the American College of Endocrinology.
