Meet Lyndsey Irwin – Community Admin

Lyndsey, who is a former pupil of both Sullivan Prep and the Senior School (class of ’97), will be supporting the Sullivan Connect project on a part-time basis as we grow registrations and engagement with our alumni community.

“I suppose I could be described as having an almost lifelong association with Sullivan. My dad, David Hayes and his sister Hillary attended the school, as did my brothers Andy (Prep only) and Jamie Hayes too, and my two daughters are currently enrolled in the Prep.

To this day, some of my very best friends are the people I met at Sullivan and so when the opportunity arose to combine some of my professional experience with the drive to build the school’s alumni community, it seemed like a great fit.”

Lyndsey has spent much of her career working in marketing, communications and the digital sector. She spent 10 years at Ulster Rugby before joining sports digital agency Sotic where she worked with clients including Six Nations Rugby, England Netball and World Sailing and now works for the NI Civil Service.

“When I entered the senior school at Sullivan in September 1990 John Young was the Headmaster and my Form Teacher in 1B was the formidable Mrs McBrien. 

My favourite school activities were sport and PE related but I was a reasonably conscientious student, albeit, a bit of a chatterbox.

I took English, French and Spanish for my A-Levels and, inspired by a young teacher by the name of Miss Lambe (now Mrs Girvin I think) who joined the school as I started Lower 6th, I went on to study Spanish and American Studies at the University of Manchester (1997-2001). Without doubt the big draw for this course was my third year which was split between Wellesley College in Boston (alma mater of Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Allbright) and a language school in Cuba's second city, Santiago de Cuba, which is located at the eastern end of the island.

Despite emerging from university with a Spanish degree I’ve never had the opportunity to use the language in the course of my working life and if holidays are anything to go by, my Spanish is now decidedly rusty. Perhaps some conversational language classes are something we could look at for future alumni courses/events?

All in all, I look back on my time at Sullivan with a great deal of nostalgia, and I’m sure there are many former pupils and teaching staff who feel the same.”

At present our focus is on establishing and building the Sullivan Connect platform and encouraging as many alumni to register as possible so, if you are in touch with former classmates, please point them in the direction of the ‘Sign Up’ button on the homepage.

We will be building this platform out, not just as our registration portal but as our hub for all things alumni related, creating a vibrant and thriving community.

“I’m looking forward to connecting, and reconnecting with as many alumni as possible in the coming weeks and months and we’ve got plans for some exciting events and initiatives with the opportunity for many Sullivanites to get involved.

In the meantime, I’ll be working to develop more content for the platform so if you have a stash of school photos in the roofspace, or some great stories you’d like to tell then I’d love to hear from you. Just drop me a line at hello@sullivanconnect.co.uk."