The three Commissioners are Patricia MacBride, Brendan McAllister and Bertha McDougall.
Patricia MacBride
Patricia MacBride is married with two children.
She worked as Project Manager for the Bloody Sunday Trust during the hearings of the Bloody Sunday Tribunal of Inquiry and was involved in the development of the Museum of Free Derry and National Civil Rights Archive. She was a Victims’ representative on the inaugural Northern Ireland Civic Forum.
In 2003, she was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship and carried out extensive research work in the USA and Argentina, examining best practice in the area of oral history and truth recovery. In 2005 she was appointed as a lay Magistrate.
Ms. MacBride’s father and brother were shot and wounded during a sectarian attack on their home in 1972, her father dying later as a result of his injuries. Her brother was an IRA volunteer who was killed by the SAS in 1984.
She is founder and Senior Partner of an award-winning public relations company and has worked on a number of world championship sporting events and with clients in the financial, telecoms, retail and public sector.
Patricia’s key interests in the Commission are the development of the Living History programme, which will record the human experiences of the conflict; and work on justice issues in terms of how they impact on victims and survivors.
Brendan McAllister
Brendan McAllister is married with three adult children.
He was Director of Mediation Northern Ireland from 1992 until his appointment as a Commissioner in 2008. He has been active as a mediator in situations related to the Northern Ireland conflict for over 25 years. He has also worked as a Neighbourhood Renewal Advisor on Community cohesion, racial tension and gangs/gun crime in England.
Brendan's earlier career was in Social Work, serving with the Probation Service for 12 years. His particular areas of responsibility with the Commission concern the Forum, Dealing with the Past and work on health issues such as conflict-related trauma.
Bertha McDougall
Bertha McDougall is widowed with three grown-up children.
She was appointed in October 2005 as the Interim Commissioner for Victims and Survivors for a period of one year. She is a Trustee of the RUC George Cross Foundation and is Chairman of the victims' group, Forgotten Families, which was set up to lobby on behalf of pre-1982 RUC widows. She is a Trustee of the Phoenix Energy for Children Charitable Trust.
Her husband Lindsay, a Civil Servant and part time RUC reservist was shot dead in January 1981 whilst on duty in Belfast.
She was a primary school teacher for fifteen years before being seconded to the Northern Ireland Council for Educational Development where she was a co-ordinator for EMU (Education for Mutual Understanding) in cross community projects. She subsequently worked for the Schools Examinations Council. Her last position in education was as Principal Officer with the Council for Curriculum Examinations and Assessment (CCEA).
