Dr Mary Duffy

Dr Mary Duffy, Trustee since November 2021

Mary comes from a close-knit rural community in Northern Ireland. The first in her family to go to university, she believes in the transformational potential of education. She has lived in Scotland since 1997 and has two children educated in Gaelic state schools.

In March 2018 Mary co-founded The Juniper Trust, which provides support to young people from low-income families who are undergraduates at Scottish universities. She is also a director of The Juniper Companies and her work combines charitable and commercial ambitions, focused on building the contexts within which people and organisations can thrive. Prior to this she led the work of BBC Children in Need in Scotland.

Mary was vice chair at The Social Enterprise Academy, an international learning organisation, where she chaired the Nominations Committee. She is a trustee of the Personal Assets Trust Foundation and a director of Didasko, a financial education company which runs a course on financial history and owns the Library of Mistakes.

A strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, Mary helped to establish Changing the Chemistry, an organisation aimed at increasing boardroom diversity in all sectors. She is disabled, with a significant hearing impairment.

Mary has a DPhil from the University of Oxford, an MSc (Econ) from the LSE, and a BSc (Hons) and PGCert from the University of Ulster.