Marie Therese Mc Givern
Director of Development, Belfast City Council, UK

Speaker Bio:

Born in Belfast, Ms. McGivern began her career as a teacher in further education. From this grew a desire to deal in a more proactive way with long-term youth unemployment and, in consequence, she spent most of the 1980s working in the areas of unemployment and in enterprise development.

In the 90s, she moved to develop policy for the youth service in Northern Ireland and in 1995 joined the Civil Service as a secondee to the Urban Regeneration Initiative, Making Belfast Work. In April 1999 she joined the Belfast City Council as Director of Development heading up a newly-created department combining the economic development, arts and tourism activities of the Council with the physical development and management. In April 2007 her responsibilities were significantly enlarged to include the Waterfront and Ulster Halls as well as taking over all community and neighbourhood development work for the Council.