Mary is motivated by her belief in the ability of highly trained couples and relationships therapists to make a difference – not just to the relational lives of couples and individuals – but also to the quality of their family life and, as a consequence, the healthy development of their children.

She is the Programme Director for primary degree level Couples and Relationships Counselling courses validated by the Pontifical University, Maynooth, Co Kildare, a position she has held for six years.

She began her training as a counsellor with a large voluntary agency specialising in couples and relationships counselling in 1978 and took on her first couple cases in 1980.  In 1984 she was selected by the agency to train as a tutor. Some years later she completed her training as a supervisor and has continued to work with the agency in all three roles since that time.

In addition to her work as couple counsellor, supervisor and tutor Mary has extensive experience of teaching and learning in other educational settings.  She taught 11 to 18 year olds in a large secondary school for thirty four years – with twenty of these spent in a senior leadership position; for eighteen years, she delivered Certificate in Person-Centred Counselling programmes for The Queen’s University, Belfast (QUB).

This crossover between counselling/psychotherapy and management and leadership in educational settings was reflected in her choice of Masters’ programme – she completed an M.Ed. degree in 1995 which combined Person-Centred approaches to psychotherapy and Jungian approaches to personal development, self-awareness and well-being with an academic examination of the challenges of ‘being a teacher’.  Her Masters research led to an invitation to continue with doctoral studies and she was conferred with a PhD by QUB in 2004.

In the period since 2006 Mary’s work in the education of couple therapists has been dominated by academic programme writing for degree-level Higher Diploma and Certificate courses and, most recently, a full B.A. degree in Couples and Relationships Counselling.

These challenges require a high level of ongoing professional development.  To keep pace with the rapidly evolving field of couples therapy she has trained in many areas including Gottman Method Couples Therapy, Relational Life Therapy, The Couples Institute Developmental Model, Polyvagal-Informed Therapy, Couples and Addiction Recovery, and the Treatment of Complex Trauma.

Mary is also passionate about making time for herself to get away from the pressures and demands of therapy and its associated academic landscape…  She manages this by allowing the part of her that is a fine art printmaker to have opportunities to doodle and draw and is a regular contributor to the Brooklyn Art Gallery’s Sketchbook Project.