The Contestants

Here is a short biog of each of the 14 new contestants for this year’s Apprentice Ireland. Over the coming weeks, we’ll have a look at each one in more detail…well, we’ll look at whoever is left. With an average age of 27, the youngest is 22 and the oldest is 33, but who will become Bill Cullen’s new Apprentice?

Aoiffe Madden is a 25 year old Galway girl and currently works as the Marketing/Business Development Executive for Clerys Department Store in Dublin. Her role involves developing monthly marketing strategies and promotions and overseeing the in-store and window displays.

Aoiffe holds a BA (Hons) in Journalism and Visual Media from Griffith College Dublin and a postgraduate diploma in PR and Event Management. And yes, she does spell her name with two Fs.

Breffny Morgan is a 22 year old Harvard graduate from Cork who returned back home to Ireland last year with a bachelor’s degree in Biology. He has a passion for rowing and a holds many varsity medals.

He currently earns a living as a personal trainer selling his expertise and knowledge gained while competing as a professional athlete. He describes himself as a “battle-hardened dynamo”. Like Aoiffe, Breffny is a fan on double-Fs.

Craig Butler is a Kildare native who works as a Sales Rep for the Kellogg Company of Ireland. He covers Dublin’s city centre area selling Kellogg cereal and snack products directly to stores such as Supervalu, Centra, Mace and SPAR. One of his innovations for displaying and selling a Kellogg product increased sales of the snack by nearly 50%.

In his spare time, 25 year old Craig likes to play gaelic football, golf and snooker.

32 year old Samantha Conroy is a teacher currently based in a school in Tallaght as a music teacher. She applied for the Apprentice because she needs a challenge and wants to prove that there’s more to her than teaching children. She’s involved in all aspects of the school, such as running and creating committees, organising events and working nearly a 60 hour week despite only being require to do 25.

Samantha’s main vice is that she’s a fitness fanatic, she runs twice a day and lifts weights. Her motto is ‘pain is temporary… but pride is forever’ and this rings through all aspects of her life, especially her sports.

Brendan Moore is a 23 year old entrepreneur from Carlow. He studied Finance and Venture Management in NUI Maynooth. While in college he created a business based on a golf V- towel prototype he designed. Brendan and his college mates turned his product into a business called Vicarious Golf.

He is currently in the process of licensing the v- towel to Callaway for distribution in Canada and the U.S.A. He has won countless number of Entrepreneur prizes including All-Ireland Shell Live Wire Young Entrepreneur 2008 and was awarded ‘Best New Product Award’ at the 2008 PGA Merchandising Show in Florida.

30 year old Donal Proctor is a building services consulting engineer for HOH Partnership. He designs building services installations for commercial, pharmaceutical, industrial and residential buildings.

As well as engineering, Donal has recently invested in his partners business, and they opened a salon together in November. He looks after the marketing and financial side of the business and is intent on making it grow during these ‘difficult times’. Donal thinks his biggest downfall is that he fails to censor himself and often talks before he thinks.

Geraldine O’Callaghan hails from Lower Sean Mc Dermot Street in Dublin. Her family are street traders and she has learnt hard core sales skills from them. She works as an Account Manager for Crystal Clear Skin Care and claims to have single handily turned their business around by improving client relations, staff training and increasing product orders around the country.

26 year old Geraldine is a qualified Beauty Specialist and Fitness Instructor. She has also established her own distribution company called B*Witched Beauty.

30 year old Steve Rayner came to Ireland in 2005 to look after his ailing grandparents in Cork. Having left the music industry in the UK, he found himself in sales; an area he’d never worked in before. He quickly found his feet and soon began to outpace his colleagues. Within four months of joining Sitcom he was promoted to Regional Sales Manager, and eventually moved up to being a consultant.

In 2008 Steve left the comfort of Sitcom to join fledging telecoms company Imagine, as their senior corporate account manager. Both his parents are school teachers so he doesn’t come from a business background.

Jennifer Quinn, at 27 years of age, is an environmental engineer for the RPS group working in the areas of hydrogeology, contaminated land and stakeholder consultancy. She has been involved in some high profile projects including fungal landfill, race against waste, the climate change campaign and the Port Tunnel.

Jennifer holds a BSc honours degree in Environmental Geochemistry and an MSc in Environmental Engineering. She was also the only person to graduate from her environmental engineer masters course. Jennifer is methodical and has a very high attention to detail; facts and figures are what motivate her.

Lucinda Kelly is a 29 year old Dubliner and works as the Content Programme Manager for Eircom, looking after one of the countries biggest websites eircom.net. Her background is in Marketing, and prior to Eircom she worked with Student Travel card as their Marketing and Operations Manager and as a Marketing Executive with the Irish Youth Hostel Association.

Lucinda holds a BA Hons degree in Information Studies and French from UCD. She has studied with the Smurfit Graduate School of Business doing Entrepreneurial studies and holds a certificate in cyber psychology from IADT.

33 year old Maria Loughran is a National Retail and Protection Development Manager for Canada Life Ireland. In Canada Life she has built a team of brokers who support the business to the tune of 1.2million euro.

Maria Loughranapplied for the Apprentice because she sees some traits in Bill that she believes are in her. She describes herself as ambitious, honest, enthusiastic and positive but stresses that she doesn’t suffer fools. She feels that she has proven herself in insurance, and thinks that once she can succeed in a business like that, she can make it anywhere.

Setanta Landers originally studied law in NUI Galway, receiving a Bachelor of Corporate Law and a Bachelor of Laws and Letters but after finishing he decided to go into accounting. At 27 he has worked hard for three years with Ernest & Young, and now realises he needs a more diverse working life and more challenges.

The death of his father last year made him determined to focus his energies on finding his calling. His father was an American Vietnam war veteran and his mother a hippy, both were radicals with the view that enjoying life was more important than making money.

Stephen Higgins is the 25 year old owner and director of The Wedding Trainer, a company that specialises in helping people to change their body type for their wedding day. Prior to setting up the company he worked in banking with Halifax and AIB and recruitment with Brightwater Selection.

Originally from Galway, Stephen is a fitness fanatic . When not training bride and grooms to be, he is focusing on his own personal training, spending a lot of time in the gym, where he is predominantly based.

Originally from Cavan, Ruth O’Dowd graduated with a Bachelor of Agricultural Science from UCD and a Masters of Business Studies in Marketing in DCU. She moved to London where she worked for Bord Bia and then Marketing Week Conferences before travelling the world. She ended up working with Unilever in Auckland, New Zealand. Here she looked after brands such as Flora, Jif and Domestos, achieving nearly a 13% increase in sales on the previous year.

She works on a voluntary basis with Lucca Leadership, enabling young people to recognise their potential and become leaders in their own right.