About

A peacemaker~architect and leadership~engagement practitioner, Mary is a certified transformational leadership coach. She works with individuals and organisations dealing with disconnection, disuse and dereliction in the place making, regeneration and community sectors.

Participants love Mary’s energising, capacity building place-making experiences. Shedding light and lifting spirits, these are rooted in her commitment to a world that works, full of vitality and belonging.

Leaders and their teams, take the ball she offers and run with it - achieving significant positive change.

Are you concerned about overcoming loneliness, segregation and division? Feeling lost, or at a loss, when it comes to generating more resilient teams and communities, free and flowing through spaces? Deeply committed to connecting people and places in spaces full of life and light where everyone belongs, Mary Kerrigan is the speaker, trainer and coach to unlock your blocks.

At 25, Mary graduated with first class honours in architecture, from Liverpool University, winning the Sikorski Prize. Drawn to work with, Liam McCormick, one of Ireland’s foremost 20th century architects took her to Derry in Northern Ireland - then a war zone, and deeply divided.

Discovering her true calling there, she’s worked at the placemaking for peacemaking coalface for over 30 years. In the 1990s, Mary’s interventions created a new context for a connected city centre in divided Derry - so the city would work better for everyone. Over years, she engaged 100s of stakeholders in this possibility, at all levels and from all backgrounds. One element was a footbridge across the River Foyle.

Derry’s beautiful Millennium Peace Bridge* opened in 2011. By its 3rd birthday, 3 million people had crossed the bridge - the many said would never happen - in both directions. It is now held to be the most successful peace building infrastructure project in Western Europe.

In 2015, Mary designed and lead Heritage Streets Alive ©. This engagement, empowerment and co-envisioning process effectively expands participants’ capacity to create a new future, together.  Nine years on, new futures, envisioned during this process, have been realised by their grass roots communities.

In 2000, a Sustainable Communities Millennium Fellowship took her to 14 European cities, where she met key actors delivering successful sustainable urban regeneration. In 2018 she was awarded a Getty Scholarship, Los Angeles. In 1992 Mary was awarded a Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings Scholarship [London]. She is the first SPAB Scholar to practice on the island of Ireland. 

A chartered architect since 1987, Mary practiced architecture across Ireland for 20 years - including co-founding and leading her own partnership for 10 years. She is the first Education Officer appointed to a Townscape Heritage Initiative in N.I.

An advisor to government in Northern Ireland for 10 years, Mary has held diverse roles in stakeholder engagement; education at 1st, 2nd and 3rd levels, and is a published author of adopted rural and conservation area design guidance.

A graduate of Mastery Foundation School for Leadership, and a certified coach in transformational leadership, Mary holds a 1st class Honours B.Arch; and B.A. (Architectural Studies) Honours degree (both from Liverpool University). The former includes a one year exchange programme to the University of Oregon, School of Architecture and Allied Arts, USA.

* The Derry Peace Bridge was designed by

Wilkinson Eyre, Architects, London