Our Leadership
Board of Directors
Drew McGinty
Founder and President
Drew McGinty grew up in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. He has a BA in Computer Science from LaSalle University and MS in Information Systems from Drexel University.
Most, if not all, of Drew's ancestors were Irish and Scots-Irish who came to Philadelphia from Antrim, Armagh, Donegal, and Tyrone. He has visited the island of Ireland many times since the early 1980s.
In 1989, he and his wife eloped and were married in Ballygowan, Co. Down. They now live in Lansdale Pennsylvania and homeschool our three children.
He is a Senior Principal Consultant with EMC and manages large Information Technology (IT) integration and business process reengineering projects for the company's customers.
Vince Leusner
Vice President and Treasurer
Vince earned a Bachelor's of Science in Business Administration from West Liberty State College, in West Liberty, West Virginia. He completed the Certified Public Accountant examination in Pennsylvania in 1985 and also earned the Certified Information System Auditor designation.
Vince and his wife of 20 years live in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. They have three teenagers - the oldest is studying engineering at Western Michigan University and the other two are enrolled in a parochial high school. Besides his professional career, Vince always has been involved in civic activities.
He served as president of the Malaysian-American Chamber of Commerce from 2005 to 2008, when Malaysia was America's 10th largest trading partner. He also served as a board member of the nonprofit organization which administered the U.S. State Department's Fulbright Scholarship program in Malaysia. In 2008, the U.S. Commerce Department recognized Vince with a Certificate of Appreciation for his work promoting trade relations.
Click here to read his full bio.
Shilagh White
Vice President and Secretary
White came to Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA) in 2005 to be the director of the arts engagement program called ArtsLehigh. She has a rich and diverse background in the arts, as performer, educator, administrator, and community volunteer.
After completing her doctorate in bassoon performance at the Eastman School of Music, she worked as a musician and librarian for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. During this tenure, and while still in the process of completing the final chapters of her academic pursuits, she became concerned with challenges associated with increasing cultural awareness and the community’s diminished appreciation of the arts in general. After attending numerous seminars on orchestra management, completing an internship with the RPO, and several years performing with Young Audiences of America, she found herself being called to a different kind of work than traditionally expected from classically trained bassoonists.
White took her newly honed arts management skills to northwest Ohio when her husband began a new business venture in Bowling Green. As director for the Muse Machine, an arts integration program of Toledo’s Performing Arts Council, she worked closely with high school teachers to find ways to integrate artistic experiences into the curriculum and to arrange for special cultural experiences for high school students outside of the classroom. The program’s success initiated arts organizations and schools in northwest Ohio to develop new partnerships and programs specifically geared for high school students and their teachers.
In recognition of her contributions to area arts and culture, White was invited to join the staff of the Toledo Museum of Art as coordinator of community events, as well as oversee the specialized Music Docent Program. She was also an art docent, specializing in the relationship between art and music. At the same time, she taught music history and music appreciation courses for Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts and Owens Community College, and served as bassoon instructor for Heidelberg College and the University of Toledo. She provided program notes and lectures for the Lima (Ohio) Symphony and hosted classical music programs on WGTE Public Radio in Toledo.
She still performed in multiple orchestras, including Kalamazoo Symphony, Toledo Symphony, Lima Symphony, and others. She serves on a number of advisory boards for various cultural organizations, and is in-demand as a speaker on a variety of topics in the arts and culture. She continues a limited bassoon performance engagement schedule with the Lehigh Orchestra, but is expanding her musical experiences with the Jamani Drummers and will occasionally sit in on an open Celtic music session if the group will allow her banging on the bodhran. She is one of 14 national bloggers for the Americans for the Arts, writing on arts engagement in higher education.
She currently lives in Bethlehem with her husband Stephen White, and is the proud mother of six year old twins. She is an avid charity ride cyclist, and also beats a goat skin (Celtic drumming), cooks, and eats everything she cooks.
Board of Advisors
John Buckley
He holds a Master's Degree in Folklore/Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania with the late Kenneth Goldstein as his advisor, and a Ph.D in Education from The Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2003.
He's an adjunct professor at La Salle University where he teaches Irish Language and Culture for the Foreign Language dept, and undergraduate and graduate courses in the Education dept. He has also taught courses in Irish Film at La Salle University, and John's Hopkins University in Baltimore, along with teaching a Visual Anthropology of Ireland course at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, and British and Irish Politics at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia.
He has consulted on numerous occasions on Irish Film with the Philadelphia International Film Festival, the Milwaukee Irish Film festival, and the Rockwood Museum in Wilmington, Delaware He has written a number of journal articles on children's folklore in Ireland for the American Journal of Children's Folklore, and the journal Blasna out of University College Cork, in Ireland.
Mr. Buckley has also written for the Irish Times newspaper and the Cork Examiner, as well as the Irish Edition newspaper in Philadelphia, on the folklore of Irish children.
Mr. Buckley is also involved in taking students to Ireland on student tours for the past 7 years, and next year plans a trip to Belfast and Derry with university students. He also leads culinary and cultural tours to Ireland on a yearly basis.Mr. Buckley is a native of Cork, Ireland, and came to the U.S. in 1984. He travels to Ireland regularly where he has a cottage in Ballycastle, Co. Mayo. He also travels to the Cork International Film festival every October to view the latest in Irish short and feature films.
Jeremy S. Dodds
With over 15 years experience, Jeremy brings an extensive leadership and background to Level3 Communications as General Manager within the Business markets group, having worked in a variety of telecom environments, from fortune 500 companies to start ups.
Mr. Dodds also spent several years at BT Global Services where he was responsible for managing globally several of BT’s largest and most strategic clients. He successfully delivered increased growth and realigned strategic initiatives that where lead out of his US based Operation and with time at Level3 Communications he was consistently within in the Top 10 producers worldwide.
Before Mr. Dodds telecom career he spent 5 years at Charles Schwab and Co in the capacity of a Senior Financial Analyst in the CTO’s office assisting and managing the technology budget. He was responsible for managing all vendor contracts and negotiations saving the division millions of dollars.
Prior to emigrating to the USA in 1993 from Northern Ireland Jeremy was accepted into the Royal Air Force to study his aeronautical degree then to follow with his role as a Harrier Jump Jet Pilot but due to personal circumstances out of his control he had to resign his acceptance and attended the College of Business Studies where he studied Business and Finance.
James F. Gaffey, Sr. (Jim)
President and CEO, The Gaffey Group
As founder of The Gaffey Group in November 2001, Jim Gaffey conceived the company's business plan. Jim proceeded to raise the initial capital funding which allowed for a focused effort towards the marketplace to begin. He has surrounded himself, and his company, with a group of seasoned and experienced professionals who operate as associates to The Gaffey Group.
A highly versatile and proven senior manager with a series of Fortune 100 companies. He has quickly established The Gaffey Group in the Atlanta and southeast market. He has also reached out to like-minded entrepreneurial thinkers in other key regional markets and cities throughout the U.S. Along with developing the core consultancy he also formed The Strategic Research Group (SRG), which provides focused strategic research on new and old markets. An element of that early work was the researching and documenting of a prospectus on the southeast market from Northern Ireland/Ireland’s point of view. SRG looked for the reasons why many European countries where very successful in these markets while Northern Ireland/Ireland lagged. The resulting comparisons of like product offerings identified a dramatic void.
Jim’s experience and training facilitates an ability to concentrate an exacting focus on project wide requirements. His first approach was to journey with the British American Business Group, in 2002, to meet with contacts at the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce Industry (NICCI), the Dublin Chamber of Commerce (DCC) and other business interests throughout the island of Ireland. He was responsible for the first ever trade mission from Ireland to Georgia in October of 2004. It was the first time in their histories that the DCC (1765) the NICCI (1768) had ever traveled together. It was a demonstration of all the attributes of a successful sales and marketing campaign strategically focused on original goals. The Gaffey Group has handled four (4) inbound trade mission from Northern Ireland and one from the Republic of Ireland.
Jim serves on the Board of Visitors of Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital and the Board of Advisors of Samford University’s Brock School of Business (Birmingham, AL). Jim has served on the Boards of the YMCA - Robert D. Fowler, Jeff Galloway Marathon Training Program. He is a graduate of City University of New York (CUNY). He is a member of both the British American Business Group and The Ireland Chamber of Commerce.
Jim is proudest of being married to Carol, a career teacher, and their four children.